HIGH SCHOOL BOYS BASKETBALL

As the pregame warmup clock ticked under a dozen minutes, Rhidge Barela sprung into action. Getting loose for this matinee matchup with Mountain Home, Highland's senior point guard jogged over to the scorer's table, where the iPhone playing music over the PA laid, and hit the skip button. Out went Baby Keem's "Family Ties," a hip-hop banger featuring Kendrick Lamar, and in came Macklemore's "Glorious" — a five-year-old melodic pop hit that's probably on the playlists of about six high school students in the area.

Turns out, Barela had planned way ahead when to skip the song: Right before a beat switch that takes the track from up-beat and exciting to low-key and soothing.

"It's only good for like the first two minutes," Barela laughed. "So then after that, I'm like, I gotta skip it."

In their 51-38 win over the Tigers Saturday afternoon, the Rams didn't operate with nearly as much precision. They lost 15 turnovers. They made just 1 of 14 triples. At times, they succumbed to Mountain Home's full-court press, which explains the visitors' late surge to tie the game. In those stretches, they looked scattershot and flummoxed, watching a double-digit lead vanish faster than Barela's first step.

In the end, though, Highland celebrated a win, the team's ninth of the season.

"That's encouraging," Rams coach Matt Stucki said. "I was really happy with the shots we got. We're gonna go look at the film, but it seems like every one of them was wide open, stepping toward the ball, toward the hoop, and those are the shots that we want — inside-out. Most of them were that shot, and we just couldn't and the net on them. But as a coach, I'm pleased with that. Being able to not shoot great from 3 and still win, turning the page, it's a big step for us."

If there's a way to feel reassured after putting up so many ugly numbers, Highland has found it. The Rams won because, after the Tigers used a fourth-quarter triple to tie the game at 33-all, they rattled off eight straight points. Barela used a two-pointer to re-take the lead. Then the hosts broke the Tigers' press in time to and Garrett Campell, who posted 11 points, open for two layups. That gave Highland an eight-point lead, but Barela later posted two more buckets for good measure, dropping in a floater and a driving layup, good for his 12th and final points of the game.

That's to make nothing of Highland forward Jayden Wright, who recorded a pedestrian game by his standards: 13 points on 5-for-7 shooting, plus some rebound total that had to number double digits. That's the thing with Wright: He's usually his team's leading scorer. On Saturday, he was exactly that, just not in a way that will raise many eyebrows — and his club still won.

"Some nights like today, shots won't fall. We just gotta keep shooting," Wright said. "I mean, if you don't put the shots up, you're not gonna score. So I think after we noticed we weren't hitting the 3s, we started moving it inside and getting those shots too."

Still, the game only looked so roughshod because Highland played scintillating defense too. The Rams yielded just 13 first-half points. They forced the Tigers into 14 turnovers. The visitors shot just 31% from the field. Heck, they logged more turnovers than made shots (13). Mountain Home's shot selection wasn't always perfect, sure, but Highland also made sure to contest shots from beyond the arc, where the Tigers connected on just 4 of 21 looks — a 19% mark.

That effort bore particular importance because Highland took a different approach on that end of the floor. The Tigers deployed a full-court press nearly the entire way. The Rams did not. They played normal half-court defense. They stuck with ball-handlers, cutting off driving lanes, swiping for the ball at the right times, generating live-ball turnovers that opened the floodgates for the Rams' transition offense, which looked effervescent.

"We just kinda came together at the end," Wright said. "We started making them play more frantic than us, started slowing down. That's what helped us a lot."

If Highland takes anything away from this game, it might be this: The team can win these ugly games. Rarely do the Rams make just one triple. Even more seldom do they give away more than two dozen turnovers. They also won't always play Mountain Home, which presses more often than most teams, so Highland won't always have to play so quickly.

What will stick around is the pre-game playlist. It started with Stucki, who told the players this at the beginning of the season: "Here's the deal. I'll listen to your nonsense music." Except it came with a catch: The players selected two songs they like, then Stucki chose one, the players selected two, Stucki chose one, and so on. "I've had to introduce these guys to the 90s music," Stucki said. "The 90s is the greatest era of music, the 90s, early 2000s."

Thing is, these guys were born in the early 2000s, so they aren't always enamored when Stucki's songs come on. That's why "Family Ties" yielded to "Glorious." That one came out in 2017, but as this season unfolds, the Rams will keep familiarizing themselves with songs that dropped around the time they were born. "It's starting to grow on them," Stucki said.

If they keep winning, the Rams might even start to like it.