After playing just one game in the previous 17 days, Mark Thomas was just happy to get back on the court.

Winning didn’t hurt, either.

“It was good to get another game under our belt,” the Warrenton head coach said Tuesday after his team’s 54-38 win over Hermann in the first round of the Hermann Tournament. “It’s tough when you don’t have back-to-back games because the kids kind of get out of the rhythm and get tired of playing against their own teammates.”

Not only did the Warriors have 13 days between games earlier this month, the layoff was bookended by losses.

The team lost to Fort Zumwalt East Jan. 6 and GAC North rival Orchard Farm last Friday by a combined six points, dropping its record to 9-5.

Tuesday, as the No. 2 seed in the Hermann Tournament, the Warriors took out their frustrations on the defensive end.

They held Hermann to 13 points in the first half and went to the locker room with a 13-point lead.

Thomas mixed up defenses throughout the half, deploying a full-court press and different half-court zones, as well as his signature man-to-man.

“We tried a lot of things early, and I think we played every defense under the sun that we’ve worked on, just to see how it worked,” he said. “I thought we played pretty well in all of them. Late in the game though, I thought our man-to-man stepped up, and it showed.”

Midway through the fourth quarter, Hermann’s Trent Anderson was fouled on a layup and converted the free throw to cut Warrenton’s lead to 10, 43-33.

The Bearcats called a timeout to set up their defense, but to no avail.

Warrenton responded with a 7-0 run to put the game away and advance to Thursday’s semifinal against No. 3 St. James.

“It feels good,” Senior forward Caleb Strauss said. “I feel like we’ve always had good games in the first two rounds here, and if we make it to the championship game this year, we need to finish it off. I feel like we’ve been in a slump and it feels great to get out of that.”

Strauss finished with 12 points.

Junior guard Jake Tonioli led the team with 15 points.

Senior guards Randy McRoberts and Dylan Chandler added eight points each.

“When we get back to being balanced offensively, we’re a stronger team,” Thomas said. “When we pass up good shots for great shots, we look a lot better. I was happy with their patience; they executed what we wanted them to, and they fixed the things we’ve been harping on in practice.”

While Tuesday’s array of defenses was more noticeable than normal, Thomas said he isn’t afraid to mix things up throughout the course of a game.

“I like to be able to mix it up,” he said. “The 2-3 zone looked OK last game. The scramble 2-3 that is kind of like UNLV’s old zone looked good, too. So it will come down to what team we’re playing and what the guys want to play. I like getting input from the guys because if they want to play something, they’re going to go hard. So I mixed it up tonight until I thought they were going to go hard.”

The Warriors face No. 3 St. James (12-4) Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the second semifinal of the night.

“St. James is always so well-coached and they always play scrappy,” Thomas said. 

The championship game is set for Saturday at 7 p.m., with the third-place game immediately prior.