Two minutes into South Whidbey’s first boys basketball game, with the score even at 10-10, Falcon coach Chris Ferrier benched all five of his starting lineup.

Benched, yes, but not for doing anything wrong.

“My system is to use more bodies at a faster pace, but only for a couple minutes at a time,” Ferrier said after the Falcon’s 84-55 drubbing of Cedar Park Christian on Tuesday.

“With 14 on the bench, I can move in players more often to see what combos work. And

I like to involve a lot of kids in the action; it fosters a real team environment,” he said.

Not to worry, though — if one thing became clear soon enough, South Whidbey is deep with talent, if not height.

Only seconds into the first period, Andy Bennett drew first blood with a single point after being fouled.

But the Eagles managed to handle Ferrier’s player merry-go-round and they were ahead 15-13 after the first quarter. There was more steady shooting and ball-handling as the Falcons concentrated on executing their new, highly explosive offense, but at some cost as several players continually fouled.

At the midway break, South Whidbey led 31-30.

All that time spent sitting on the sidelines left players rested and ready to explode out of the gate in the third quarter. They quickly opened up a 17-point lead, of which a dozen came from Riley Newman.

With Bennett, Erikson, Thornley and Price picking up the pace on shots due in no small measure to the quality of their hustle, Cedar Park dropped its guard on Newman.

Newman made them pay the price for a third-quarter lead of 58-35.

“The fourth quarter was more of the same,” Ferrier said. “We continued to attack offensively and closed out a 53-point second half.

“We forced 21 turnovers and outrebounded them 37 to 25, including 20 offensive rebounds for us. We also only turned the ball over 10 times, which considering the pace we play at, is pretty remarkable,” he added.

Indeed. The game ended at 84-55 while the Eagle coaches and players could only wonder where the Falcons got all that energy in the second half.

“The first half we couldn’t get into a rhythm, we played way too much defense with our hands instead of our feet and we put Cedar Park in the double bonus fairly early,” Ferrier said. “It’s hard to play at our desired pace when we foul.”

Thornley said that, though he’s never played the coach’s new system before, the off-and-on-the-bench idea seemed to work.

“I felt pretty fresh the whole game,” Thornley said. “It’s good to have an energetic guy like the coach around, especially since he’s approachable.”

Teammate Shelby Ball said that when the team shoots well, gets rebounds and has good defense, it will win.

“I think Ferrier is going to stick around. He knows what he’s doing and he’s a good fit for the school,” Ball said.

That’s Ferrier’s overall game plan.

“All in all, it was a good start for a non-conference game,” he said “I think we can continue to get better and come out firing in the next game, but it was a good starting point for the season.”

Newman led the team with 26 points. Bennett had 12 points, Cole Erikson and Jordan Thornley each netted 10, Harrison Price had nine and Zach Comfort, six. Price contributed eight rebounds, Newman had seven plus five steals and three assists. Thornley added six steals.

Thursday, the Falcons lost a hotly-contested battle 82-79 in overtime against Interlake in Bellevue.

Newman led all with 27 points, Thornley and TJ Russell posted 10 points each.

The Falcons are now 1-1 for the season.

Jeff VanDerford can be reached at 221-5300 or sports@southwhidbeyrecord.com.