Jarquez Smith scored 27 points and Jordan Johnson added 20 as First Presbyterian won its 24th game of the season Friday with a 79-35 win over visiting Edmund Burke.

The Highlanders trailed early against the Spartans, who tried to lull the up tempo Highlanders out of their game. After a FPCA run to make it 14-7 at the end of the first period, Highlanders coach David Jones switched defenses.

"We started out the game and I think we took them for granted. We didn’t have a lot of movement and we started ‘you play defense and I’ll shoot it’ when we are on offense, so to get more movement and tempo we went to man-to-man defense in the second quarter," he said.

It worked. The Highlanders limited Edmund Burke a three points in the second period and ran away to a 41-10 halftime lead.

Jones said the change in defense also gave his club a chance to work on their man versus another team, which he cannot do in practice because of his small roster.

"It’s kind of hard to practice a man defense five on air," Jones said.

With the game in hand FPCA was able to rest its starters most of the second half.

"We were able to use tonight to work on a lot of things that will be able to help us the deeper we get into region play and in the post season. EBA are a well coached team they are just young and inexperienced right now," Jones said.

Jones was also pleased with the effort that his team put forth on the boards Friday night.

They were scheduled to host Curtis Baptist Saturday afternoon.

"They beat Frederica Academy who we struggled with mainly because they play with a much slower tempo. Curtis doesn’t have a lot of size but they will be scrappy so we are going to have to play good basketball to beat them," Jones said.

FPCA 14|27|27|11-79

EBA 7|3|13|12-35

FPCA - Jarquez Smith 27, Jordan Johnson 20, D’Angelo Streeter 11 D.J. Felder 9, Dominique Kirkley 7, Martin Causer 3, Michael Tige 2