Kalamazoo Christian ran out to an early lead and cruised to a 73-58 non-conference victory over Martin Tuesday.

“We got off to a semi-slow start and found ourselves trailing by nine (22-13) at the end of the first quarter,” said Martin coach David Curry. “The second was a little better but we were still outscored by six and found ourselves down by 15 at half.”

Martin rallied in the second half, and actually outscored Christian 21-19 in the fourth quarter but it was a matter of too little, too late.

“We decided to change some things offensively and it seemed to get things moving for us in the second half,” Curry said. “I felt on the defensive end we executed our game plan fairly well. They ended up having a couple of other people who stepped up and scored some points for them that we weren’t expecting.

“We turned up the defensive pressure in the second half and they didn’t handle it as well as I expected them to. This created some good opportunities for us at the other end of the floor.”

Curry praised the Kalamazoo-based team for its game plan.

“Christian has great patience on the offensive end and it tends to work in their favor because they shoot well from the perimeter. We chose to not closely guard Dean VanElderen in the paint and it ended up biting us tonight. He had 12 and in all of the film we had, he didn’t seem to be that big of a threat. Hats off to him for stepping up.

“I’m still happy with the overall performance of our kids. They continue to have that never die attitude no matter what the score is. At the end of the day it’s games like this that make us a better team, win or lose.”

Tanner Curry led Martin with 20 points and Garrett Dill finished with 10. Andrew Keyzer played another solid game, finishing with nine points and five rebounds.

PHOTO: Tanner Curry (52)