The Ottawa Pirates didn’t come out shooting or defending the ball exceptionally well in the early-going of their early Friday afternoon opener against Northridge Prep in the 62nd Plano Christmas Classic.

Luckily for the Pirates, they more than made up for it in the second quarter.

Ottawa advanced on to a 5:30 p.m. Saturday championship quarterfinal matchup with archrival La Salle-Peru via a comfortable, 61-39 victory Friday over Northridge Prep. The Pirates trailed by four points through one quarter, then exploded in the second, outscoring the Knights 24-10 to assume control.

Senior post Owen Sanders put up a 17-point, 10-rebound double-double for Ottawa. Rory Moore added a dozen points, Dominic Parks (four assists) and Blake Schiltz contributed six points apiece, Hezekiah Joachim added one point and a game-high five assists, and junior George Shumway scored a career-best 10 points.

Two of Shumway’s 10 came on a hustle steal and contorting, contested layup just ahead of the third-quarter buzzer that fired up the Pirates to put the Knights away once and for all in the opening minutes of the fourth.

“I stunted towards [Northridge’s ball-handler] hoping to get him to pick it up, and I managed to poke it out,” Shumway said. “I got the ball at half court and looked up at the shot clock, five seconds left, so from there I had to go up with it, and it ended up going in.

“I was just piped up, end of the quarter, make a buzzer-beater.”

Ottawa (6-2) trailed 12-8 through one quarter, struggling to 3-of-11 shooting from the field while Northridge Prep (4-7) was 4-for-8 including a trio of 3s.

That all changed with the start of the second quarter. The Pirates came out blazing with a pair of Parks’ 3-pointers in the opening 90 seconds of the second sandwiched around an old-fashioned three-point play from Schiltz. The 12-8 deficit had become a 17-14 lead, and Ottawa continued to wax it from there, leading by 10 at halftime, 32-22.

“I thought we looked really slow early,” Pirates coach Mark Cooper said. “Dom gave us a nice spark [with a pair of 3-pointers] in the second quarter, Rory and George throughout the game did a lot of good things, and Owen became more of a presence as the game went on.”

Billy Arnold finished with 14 points and a pair of steals to lead Northridge Prep. Ben Lukens and Dominic Chapello chipped in five points apiece for a Knights team outshot 47.8% (22-of-46) to 31.9% (15-of-47) and outrebounded 36-27 by the Pirates.

“We’re going through a lot of growing pains right now as a team,” Knights coach Will Rey said. “We’re playing four sophomores in our eight-man rotation and two juniors who haven’t played varsity basketball before. So six of our eight are new varsity players, and it’s showing.

“It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact, but we’ve had a lot of moments this year where we played better than we did today, so give [Ottawa] a lot of credit. I thought they did a nice job of finding our weaknesses and exploiting them.”

Comfortably ahead by 19 points, Ottawa was able to rest its starters the final 2:26 of the fourth quarter in preparation for playing four games over five days, continuing with what promises to be a physical, emotional rivalry meeting with La Salle-Peru on Saturday for the right to go to the semifinals.

“We come here to play in the winners’ bracket and see how successful we can be,” Cooper said. “Now we’ve positioned ourselves there, and we’ll have to up our level of play.”