It was a wire-to-wire victory for the Pella Christian girls basketball team Saturday night in the opening round of the Class 2A Region 6 tournament, as the Eagles defeated Cardinal 61-29 in a game heard live on 92.1 KRLS.

Karis Fikkert hit an early three-pointer to start the scoring, but P.C. led just 3-2 nearing the midway point of the first quarter when head coach Brendan Foughty called a timeout to try to spark his team.

“I just felt like we were not as aggressive as we wanted to be defensively, especially on the back end of our pressure. We talked a lot about anticipation, and we just didn’t have it. Buckets will fall for us when they need to fall as long as we’re doing the right things, so it wasn’t a matter of that. I just felt like, maybe it was the first postseason game, a little jitters, so a timeout was important to get us to calm down and refocus on what we needed to be doing.”

The Eagles came out of that timeout with a 9-0 run and built a 17-8 lead after the first quarter. It ballooned to 39-13 at halftime, then a 14-0 run to start the third put the game into running clock mode.

Chloe Snyder led three Pella Christian players in double figures with 15 points, Faith Kacmarynski scored 14, including a three-pointer at the first half buzzer, and Rachel Kacmarnsyki added a 13-point 13-rebound double-double.

The Eagles improve to 10-12 on the season and will travel to North Mahaska for a regional quarterfinal on Tuesday night.