Matt Stucki held his arms out like a bird, encouraging his Highland team to slow down and kill clock. The Rams were in the final stages of their second straight win, this one a 55-45 victory over Century on Friday night, and they needed to relax a little. Let this one unravel. They had earned it.

“I think we came out and played really good defense,” Highland forward Jayden Wright said. “Luke Panttaja’s been killing it. Gotta give respect to him. But tonight, our goal was to stop him, and I think we did that.”

Which is exactly why the Rams had the luxury of winding this win down on their terms. A month ago, Panttaja torched Highland’s defense for 30 points on five triples. Century’s star guard parried every Highland bucket with one of his own. The Rams won, a narrow decision in overtime, but they couldn’t find a way to bottle up Panttaja, a wiry senior with marksman accuracy on a sweet left-handed jumper.

Highland made sure it looked scattershot in this second meeting. On Friday night, Panttaja scored 13 points on 14 shots. He misfired on all six of his 3-point attempts. He posted five of his points at the free throw line. Panttaja didn’t exactly play a bad game, not necessarily. He just missed shots—and, more importantly, the Rams forced the ball out of his hands.

Mostly, they did so one way: Blitzing him on ball screens. “He loves ball screens,” Highland guard Rhidge Barela said. “We found out that his little fist sign was a ball screen. So every time he got a ball screen, we just trapped it. And we trapped it pretty good tonight. That was just the game plan, to trap him and stop him from getting as many shots as he could because he knocks them down.”

Highland’s strategy paid off in bushels. When the Rams forced Panttaja to pass, they found themselves on the wrong end of 4-on-3 situations, but that’s where the other part of the calculus kicked in. They scrambled well. They rotated to the right players. They weren’t perfect, allowing a bucket or two, but they figured they would rather another Diamondback beat them than Panttaja. They won that bet like expert gamblers.

“He comes off that and he’s so good at getting downhill,” Stucki said. “The game plan was to commit two people to him and then sag the other guys and get it out of his hands and rotate back, and we did a really good job of keeping him off balance and making someone else beat us.”

The Rams (8-5) responded with enough firepower on offense to take advantage. Wright posted 17 points. Barela added 14. Owen Wilde chipped in nine. Maybe that’s nothing to raise your eyebrows at—Wright has led his team in scoring for what feels like the millionth time this winter—but remember Highland’s last time out, a win over Mountain Home? In that one, the Rams hit just 1 of 14 from distance. They liked the shots they were getting. They just had zero luck making them.

After the game, Stucki sounded anything but worried. Turns out, he had a reason for feeling that way. In this win over Century, Highland connected on 8 of 23 from beyond the arc. Barela, Wilde and Jonah Erickson splashed two triples apiece. Drake LeFevre bottomed one from the corner. The last one came from Wright, who banked in a long ball from the left wing. If he called it, it wasn’t audible in the stands—but it counted all the same.

“We all ribbed him a little about his bank-in,” Stucki said with a smile. “If we can hit a couple threes, it’s huge for us. Once we hit those, now, you notice for Jayden, it opens up for him a lot more inside. We need to hit a couple just to keep it open for him.”

Thing is, the one 3-point celebration Highland rolled out wasn’t exactly after a 3-pointer. It came from Barela, who made a free throw in the final seconds to put the game away, and as he jogged back on defense, he put two hands together and held them up to the side of his face—Steph Curry’s “Night Night” celebration, a sign that the shot you just made put the other team to bed.

Curry likes to use that one after particularly huge shots. Threes that electrify the crowd. Shots that really signal things are over. Barela did it after a free throw to push his team’s lead to nine. He smiled when he was relayed the difference. Sometimes it’s more about having fun.

“I told Owen Wilde, watch what I’m about to do,” Barela said, “and then I just did it.”