PETERBOROUGH — The thing about the Conant boys basketball team is that they constantly go after opponents.

There is no rest, no way to hide and so far this season, no one has found a way to counteract it.

The Orioles pride themselves on defense, conditioning and forcing mistakes. And all three of those factors played a part in Tuesday night’s 60-38 win over ConVal in front of a close to capacity crowd at ConVal’s Robert Maguire Gymnasium.

As part of a varsity doubleheader, the boys played their cross-divisional game following a thrilling overtime victory for the Conant girls amidst a sea of pink-clad fans who came out to support the 3rd annual Hoops for Hope breast cancer awareness fundraiser.

“When was the last time you saw this many people in this gym with this atmosphere? It’s great for both programs,” said Conant coach Eric Saucier, who also teaches math at ConVal. “You can’t beat the crowd we had, and I heard we raised over $2,000 for a great cause, so it’s a win-win situation.”

It wasn’t all Conant, all the time, but when it mattered the most, it was.

ConVal came out with a lot of energy. The team had been blown out the previous two meetings and obviously wanted to keep that from happening again.

After Conant took a lead out of the gate, going up 5-2 following a Jake Carlson three-pointer, ConVal went on a 9-0 run for an 11-5 edge.

In turn, the Orioles put together a 7-1 streak that knotted the game at 12 before Barrett Proctor stole one and laid it in to give the Cougars a 14-12 lead after the first.

“We talked about how we knew they were going to have a ton of energy. We knew the place was going to be packed and that always brings out energy,” said Saucier. “So we knew they were going to come out hard. We talked about at the beginning of the game of how we just wanted to weather the storm.”

A Carlson jumper with just less than six minutes left in the second gave Conant the lead at 17-16 and the undefeated Orioles never gave it up.

They outscored ConVal 14-7 the rest of the way and took a 31-23 advantage into the locker room.

For much of the season, the Cougars have been able to put together a solid quarter or two of play in each game. But the rest of the game typically shows where the development of the program is.

They played pretty well for the first half against Conant and that turned out to be all ConVal had in the tank.

“We played a competitive half. We did. There’s no question about it,” said first-year ConVal coach Peter Pierce. “And that’s what we’re trying to do, but we’re also trying to get to three quarters and a full game.”

Saucier is comfortable playing any one of the 12 players on his roster for any length of time and all 11 in uniform on Tuesday did just that. The Cougars, on the other hand, played 10, but the last three were only used in a sparing role.

“It’s a huge advantage we have. We’re not big, but we’ve got small guys who like to run and can run a long time,” Saucier said.

So at the end of the first half, ConVal was gassed and Conant was just getting started. A 9-2 run to begin the third opened up a 15-point advantage and a 16-5 scoring advantage for the quarter made it a 47-28 lead for the Orioles with eight minutes to play.

“We were worn down at halftime. It took an incredible amount of energy for us to compete in the first half and we were clearly on the losing side of that,” said Pierce. “They’re beginning to understand how much work goes into playing at a high level.”

And another 11 straight to begin the fourth pushed the Conant advantage to 30, 58-28. ConVal scored the final eight points of the game, seven coming from junior Harrison LeFlem, to make the final margin 22.

Conant improved to 5-0 on the season and remains one of three undefeated left in Division III. ConVal dropped to 1-4.

“The difference can easily be traced back to off-season work,” said Pierce.

All 11 players scored for the Orioles, led by Carlson and sophomore Robert O’Brien, who each put in 10. Senior Dan Sirois added nine and junior Devin Springfield scored eight.

ConVal senior Taylor Doyle scored a team best 11 and Jake Bacon had 10 points.

Conant travels to Campbell, 5-1, on Friday and ConVal will host John Stark, 2-3, the same night.

This article appears in the Jan.12, 2012, edition of the Ledger-Transcript.