Be it a break from routine with school out of session, playing in an unusual site at an atypical time of day or just a little too much Christmas ham, slow starts are a common basketball coach’s complaint during holiday tournament openers.

The La Salle-Peru Cavaliers had no such holiday hangover Friday afternoon in their 70-36 handling of Bremen to open the 62nd annual Plano Christmas Classic.

“We’ve been working on trying to get the ball moved around more, getting into our actual offense, and I thought we played pretty damned good defense,” L-P coach John Senica said. “I’m going to be honest with you, I was a little afraid. We’re coming out of Christmas, and you don’t know what the heck you’re going to get.

“But I’ll tell you, I’m very proud of them and how they played today. Right from the get-go, they were focused, zeroed-in and did what they had to do to get the win.”

L-P (7-2) shot just over 50% from the field in the opening quarter and just got better from there, finishing a scorching hot 63.6% (28-of-44) to leave the Braves (1-9) in the dust.

Thanks to excellent transition game play, selfless passing and a consistent ability to knock down the open shot after they’d created it, the Cavaliers led 17-10 by the close of one quarter, 37-18 by halftime and had kicked in the 30-point continuous clock in time for the start of the fourth quarter with a 62-32 advantage.

Gavin Stokes drained his last seven shots – four of them 3-pointers – to finish with a team-high 21 points to go with his seven rebounds. Jameson Hill added seven points and three steals, Braylin Bond and John Sowers each scored six points on 3-for-3 shooting, and Marion Persich finished with 16 points, seven rebounds and five assists.

“We’ve been really up and down lately,” said Persich, who scored all 16 of his points over the game’s opening three quarters. “Sometimes we’ll have really good games; sometimes we’ll have really bad games. But I think today we just came out and shot the ball really confidently.

“We were just running through the plays, and defense really fires us up. When everyone’s playing together, it’s just great basketball.”

“I think our offense was creating that [efficiency],” Senica said, “and we were way overdue. We’ve got a lot of good shooters on the team, and we have not shot very well all season so far. I think we’re finally starting to get over the hump of our shooting slump.”

While La Salle-Peru couldn’t miss on one end of the court, on the other Bremen struggled throughout. The Braves finished shooting just 25.5% (12-of-47) from the field, not getting much outside of a 19-point, five-steal effort from Kishawn Gantt and 11 points off the bench courtesy of Carter Luster.

Their inability to slow down the Cavaliers was just as costly.

“Defensively, we didn’t execute the game plan, stopping the gaps,” Bremen coach Amir Ross said. “We let them get a lot of open 3s. We just weren’t consistent enough tonight. ...

“[To bounce back Saturday in a matchup with Northridge Prep,] I just think we need to have more energy and be better with communication.”

The Cavaliers face a familiar foe in Saturday’s championship quarterfinals, squaring off against archrival Ottawa, itself a 61-39 winner over Northridge Prep immediately before L-P took the floor Friday. Saturday’s opening tip is scheduled for 5:30 p.m.