Marques White gets off a clean look and hits a 3 in Brophy win over Perry (AzPreps365 photo)

Brophy Prep's second-quarter performance Tuesday against region foe Perry was the kind a coach savors. Broncos coach Matt Hooten wouldn't mind seeing more.

"That's something you want to bottle, and maybe we can make it happen for 32 minutes," Hooten said admiring his team's 61-43 victory over Perry on the Pumas' home court. Brophy is now 11-0 i power-ranking games and 5-0 in the 6A Premier Region.

Brophy (17-1 overall) outscored Perry, 15-3, in the second period to take a comfortable 34-18 lead to halftime. That margin slipped briefly to 36-26 early in the third period, but a timeout rectified any issue of a tight finish that has been a staple of late for the Broncos. Perry never reduced the deficit below 10 as Brophy got back to maintaining the brand of ball that got them such a large edge the rest of the way.

"I think going into the summer and fall we were thinking offense would be our calling card," Hooten said. "It's turned out it's been about defense. This is an unselfish group. I think that showed tonight."

Brophy's scoring was paced by senior guard Ian Burke's 20 points. Burke totated 12 at intermission, but got additional offense from five players who scored four or five points in the opening half (Jaxson Baker, Marques White off the bench, Colin Besch, Basil Ribakare and Ben Paul).

Brophy led 19-15 after the first period, The Broncos forced at least six Perry turnovers in the second quarter and stifling man-to-man defense led to Perry making only 1 of 11 field goals in the period. The lone bucket was a putback by Kyle Patterson. 

Three of Brophy six baskets in the second quarter were 3s. All of those came on quality looks as the passing looked much like a game of hot potato. Hard for any defense to react to the passing prowess the Broncos displayed for those eight minutes and periodically the rest of the evening.

Perry, which entered the game the consummate .500 team (10-10 overall, 6-6 in power-ranking games and 2-2 in region) got decent scoring from leading scorer Jalen Williams and post-Christmas edition Patterson. Williams finished with 17 and Patterson 15. They scored 16 of Perry's 18 first-half points.

Perry gets no rest playing host to another top-five opponent in a non-region battle with Desert Vista on Wednesday. Brophy returns to action Thursday with another trip to the East Valley to face non-region opponent Desert Ridge.