RENO — A slow start was not enough to keep the Spanish Springs Cougars from collecting their first league win. Despite facing a 14-point deficit less than six minutes into their High Desert League battle at North Valleys, the SSHS squad rallied behind the 31 points of Taelor Marchbanks and captured an 81-71 victory in boys prep basketball action Friday night.

Spanish Springs scored the first bucket of the game on a Tyler Emrick layup, but its offense went cold for the next five-plus minutes. Meanwhile, North Valleys got busy reeling off 16 unanswered points.

Vince Bolt converted 1 of 2 foul shots at the 2:46 mark of the first period to give the host Panthers a 16-2 lead. Spanish Springs finally stemmed the spurt when it got a transition layup from Kyle Raymond off a long outlet pass on Bolt’s missed free throw.

The Cougars woke up from there and answered with nine unanswered points of their own. The burst initiated a 12-1 Spanish Springs run that saw the local school trim the North Valleys’ lead to 17-14 following a trey by Marchbanks with a minute left in the initial quarter.

North Valleys regained its composure and pushed its lead back to eight with a mini run of five straight points. That gave the Panthers a 22-14 edge in the opening minute of the second quarter. That’s about as good as it got for the north Reno school.

The game of spurts continued. Thomas Perkins dropped the first of his five second-period three-point bombs to finish off a 7-0 Spanish Springs run, that cut the NVHS lead to one, 22-21.

“In the beginning, I think we were a little tentative and unsure of ourselves,” Spanish Springs coach Kyle Penney said. “In terms of shot selection and being aggressive, it’s like we were asking ourselves ‘are we going to get beat or are we going to be decent players tonight.’ Then, all of a sudden Taelor and Thomas hit a couple shots and we changed our attitudes. We started to play some defense and it’s like everything was OK.”

With three minutes remaining before halftime, North Valleys was still clinging to the lead, 32-29. Spanish Springs closed out the second quarter with 11 unanswered points on the strength of two Perkins treys and another by Marchbanks.

“Offensively, we got whatever we wanted. It was all based off penetration, nothing fancy,” Penney said. “We got our point guard into the lane, made one pass to the strong side and got good shots.”

Spanish Springs did not trail the rest of the way. Marchbanks hit the last of his five 3-pointers midway through the third period that gave Spanish Springs a 48-36 lead, its biggest of the conference clash.

Still, North Valleys did not go away. The Panthers fought back to cut the Spanish Springs advantage to three, 63-60. The Cougars (11-6, 1-2 HDL) nixed any Panthers hopes of a comeback by scoring 12 of the next 14 points over the next two minutes.

“They hit some shots on the perimeter. We had to make some adjustments,” North Valleys coach Joe Genung said. “They did a good job of spreading us out ... They made us pay for every mistake we made.”

In addition to the 31 points of Marchbanks, Perkins contributed 19 points to the winning cause while Emrick chipped in 10.

Ajani Norman and Aaron Short scored 17 and 15 points respectively to pace North Valleys (3-12, 0-3).

Spanish Springs is in action again Friday when it hosts Elko at 7 p.m.