Nazareth senior co-captains Stella Sakalas and Lyla Shelton knew exactly what they wanted to do against Maine South on Saturday.

“We had been preparing the past two days for them,” Sakalas said. “We knew they were going to be an aggressive team.

“We just came out harder than we usually do.”

That is an understatement. Shelton scored 11 of her game-high 16 points and Sakalas had four assists and four steals as the Roadrunners raced out to a 22-2 lead and cruised to a 50-27 victory at the Coach Kipp’s Hoopsfest at Maine West.

It was a stunning start to what many assumed would be a great matchup.

“I think we all knew what we needed to do coming into the game,” Shelton said. “Our defense is where we’ve been trying to improve recently.

“We had really good defense. We capitalized on that and we swung the ball around. We got the ball moving and Sophia (Towne) did a good job of facilitating it.”

Shelton sank her first five shots for the Roadrunners (17-3), who scored the first 15 points of the game before Emily Currey sank a 3-pointer to get Maine South (17-5) on the board. Most of Shelton’s points came off transition layups. She also had one of her two 3-pointers during the run.

“We watched the film and we saw that they press everybody,” Nazareth coach Eddie Stritzel said. “And I thought we did exceptionally well in holding our own against it.

“To me, that was the name of the game. That’s a high-quality team, so to do what we did to them, we’re really happy about the way we played.”

In addition to Shelton, who scored the first five points of the fourth quarter to extend the lead to 48-17, the Roadrunners got excellent performances from Sakalas, Towne and freshman Mia Gage.

The BYU-bound Sakalas finished with eight points, 11 rebounds, six steals and five assists. Towne added 12 points, four boards and three steals, and Gage chipped in 11 points and 10 rebounds.

Nazareth shot 17 of 36 from the floor, 12 of 14 from the free-throw line and outrebounded the Hawks 33-17.

“They’re very, very good,” Maine South coach Jeff Hamann said.” I thought that we were going to come out with a better mental head space and we just didn’t.

“It’s nothing against our kids. I love our team. But it was our fourth game in five days. It showed.”

Currey paced the Hawks with 10 points. Phoebe O’Shea added seven points and four rebounds and Amelia Fernandez had six points.

“All the credit to (Nazareth) but we were 10 of 44 from the field and 4 for 24 from the arc,” Hamann said. “You’re not going to win many games that way.

“But part of it was we were tentative and part of it was they were doing a great job of contesting us.”

Despite the loss, Hamann was glad to have the experience of playing Nazareth.

“Ten times out 10, if we have the opportunity to play a team of that caliber, we’re going to go ahead and do it,” Hamann said. “This game is not going to define us. We’ve got to keep moving forward and learn from it.”