MINONK - When junior guard Noah Martin began drilling 3-pointers in the first half Tuesday night, Fieldcrest High School's strategy was simple.

Get him the basketball.

"If somebody gets hot, we're going to run a set play for him," Coach Matt Winkler said. "We'll try to find him in our set offense if we can or in our transition offense."

First, the Knights had to get the ball from visiting Ridgeview. They did it with a swarming defense, forcing 10 turnovers in the pivotal second quarter on their way to a 64-54 Heart of Illinois Conference victory.

Fieldcrest, playing its season opener, outscored the Mustangs 23-13 in the second quarter, with Martin scoring 13 points. The surge turned a 13-11 first-quarter deficit into a 34-26 halftime lead.

"That's how we're going to have to play this year because we're really small," Martin said. "We're going to have to pressure teams and cause turnovers to get easy points.

"Our defense was really good. We pressured them and that got them out of their rhythm a little bit."

Martin made Ridgeview pay by sinking 5 of 7 from 3-point range in the first half. He scored 19 of his game-high 24 points in the opening half, getting on a roll after banking in his first 3-point try from the top of the key.

"I got good passes," Martin said. "They got me right in rhythm. I just knocked them down because I got good screens and they gave me good passes."

"Noah is a great outside shooter, and he carried us," Winkler said. "We put a little more pressure on the ball (in the second quarter). We got steals, not on the ball, but away from it, which is something we've been preaching to them."

Junior forward Jake Bane led the defensive effort with six steals to go with his nine points. The Knights led by as many as 17 points in the third quarter before Ridgeview (3-1, 0-1) began to chip away.

The Mustangs whittled the lead to nine points twice in the fourth quarter, but could not overcome a second quarter in which they committed more than half of their 18 turnovers.

"It was frantic. They're very athletic and they did a good job of getting in the passing lanes," Ridgeview coach Rodney Kellar said. "They really took us out of a lot of things we like to do offensively.

"We hoped to play a little bit better and give ourselves a chance with a full 32 minutes. But the second eight minutes there got us pretty good."

Jordan Krone scored eight points, while Robert Kreiser added seven points and eight rebounds for Fieldcrest. The Knights shot 48 percent from the field and gained a 34-27 rebounding edge.

"I thought for the first ballgame our continuity was pretty good, and our chemistry was pretty good for running in 10 guys," Winkler said. "We lost five of our top six (from last year), so we're mixing some young with some old."

Casey Heimer's 15 points and six rebounds paced Ridgeview, which made 37 percent of its field-goal attempts. Junior guard Bradley Ghere added 10 points, six assists and four steals.

"I told the kids, let's look at this from a glass half-full instead of glass half-empty," Kellar said. "I was very proud of the last six minutes. I thought we had some kids make some plays and we saw some positives in the fourth quarter that we can build on."