Without the size it had last year, the Hinckley-Big Rock girls basketball team is looking to get out and run more this year.

After a 48-12 win against IMSA on Thursday, the Royals have raced out to a 3-0 start in Little 10 play, one of just two 3-0 teams in the conference.

“It’s hard sometimes not having one of those bigs,” said Hinckley-Big Rock junior guard Mia Cotton, who scored 16 points Thursday. “But I think we’re pretty fast, we all run, we all work together, we’re all pretty good at running the court. At the beginning of the season it was rough. But we’ve worked our way through it and we’re a lot better.”

Cotton and the Royals (9-4 overall) dictated the speed of play against the Titans (1-9 overall, 0-3 conference), who were missing two starters. They forced 30 turnovers, including eight steals by Cotton.

Coach Bob Barnett said he’s been working with Cotton to cut down her fouls - she wasn’t called for any Thursday. That, he said, is making her an even more dangerous defender.

“She’s been our sparkplug,” Barnett said. “She plays well on defense when she’s not reaching with one hand. We’ve kind of weaned her off that. Now she’s going with two hands so it’s a jump ball or a steal.”

Ideally, Barnett said he’d like to pressure more but he doesn’t have the depth to withstand much foul trouble.

But the defense still clicked Thursday, holding the Titans without a point for more than two quarters. Kate Honchar made a putback with 3:28 left in the second quarter to cut the H-BR lead to 16-10. The next time the Titans scored, it was on a free throw with a running clock in the fourth quarter. When Joanna Swearengen’s first free throw went through the hoop, the clock showed 3:47 as it continued to count down.

“Our defense is really good,” Cotton said. “We did a good job doubling down on the big girl [6-foot-1 center Honchar], which is really good because we don’t have much height on our team.”

Anna Herrmann led the Royals with 22 points. The senior guard and four-year varsity starter holds the school’s 3-point records. She made four on Thursday as she tries to get on the state’s Top 20 list.

She said she’s either one or three away from Hillcrest’s Briana Dunlap and her 281 made 3s at No. 20.

Herrmann said she liked that the team is trying to pick up the pace a little more this year.

“I like pushing it a lot more energy-wise,” Herrmann said. “It just gets us going. I hope we can continue to get up our energy even a little bit more because I feel like it helps our team a lot and I’m hoping to secure more wins.”

The main defender on Honchar was junior forward Grace Hall. While she didn’t score, she was the main part in stopping Honchar and had four rebounds and five assists.

She also had a no-look pass in the paint to Amelia Michels in the first quarter. In the second, she jumped out of bounds and saved a ball with a behind-the-back toss, which ended up in the hands of Herrmann and resulted in fast-break points.

“That’s what she is there for,” Barnett said. “She can score. We don’t need her to. Anything from Grace and a couple others, it helps. But she plays good defense. We went to a box-and-one against [Honchar], and then I had Amelia help her and we shut her down. So that was what we were looking for.”