Cam Craig made a believer out of Bryant Layman on Saturday night.

Craig, an outstanding 6-foot-4 freshman basketball player for Switzerland County, poured in 34 points to help the Pacers defeat Layman’s Tigers 81-31.

“That 33 (Craig), he was solid,” Layman said. “I was telling my team that kid is D2 (NCAA Division II) caliber. He’s going to be a good basketball player.

“I knew we needed to stop them. Sometimes, you need the Jimmies and Joes and X’s and O’s, and we didn’t have the Jimmies and Joes or the X’s and O’s to take on that team. We’re going to run into some of these 2A buzzsaws, and that was one of them. We ran only three set plays the whole night, and we scored on two of them.”

The Tigers played without two players who are quarantined because of COVID-19 — Beau Napier and Damian Bowman — and Layman said he will have the services of two other transfers at the end of the month and says those players will definitely give the Tigers more depth and should battle for starting positions.

Craig scored 19 points in the first period to help the Pacers charge out to a 33-7 lead. Craig made two 3-pointers, was 3-for-3 at the free throw line and had five 2-point goals in the opening period.

He scored 6 points in the second period and 9 in the third for his total of 34.

Craig opened the scoring for the night with a 3-point basket, and Bryce Turner followed with a fast break layup and it was 5-0 before Zach Helt scored for the Tigers.

The visitors increased their lead to 13-2 before Helt added another basket, and Matt Clouse hit the first of his two 3-pointers for a 16-7 score at the halfway point of the period. Switzerland County then scored the final 17 points of the first quarter and first 6 of the second for a 39-7 cushion.

The Pacers held a 50-16 lead at the half, then scored early in the second half and the running clock rule went into effect for the remainder of the game.

Switzerland County outscored the Tigers 27-6 in the third period in improving its record to 2-1.

Helt was high scorer for the Tigers with 12 points, and Adam Turner led in rebounds with 6.

Layman said his team is going to have trouble battling the Class 2A and strong Class A teams on the schedule.

“Our personnel has been lackluster. We need to continue to work on fundamentals. I can’t believe I’m saying this at the high school level, but a lot of these kids have just never even touched the floor,” he said. “We’re trying to do what we can do and just communicate. They just don’t talk. There’s just not enough firepower unfortunately. It’s been a rough start. There are quite a few teams on our schedule that I like our chances against.”

The Tigers (1-3) will host Medora Tuesday night with the varsity game set to start at 7:30 p.m.