The growing pains for the young South Effingham boys basketball team were sharp Saturday night.

The Bluffton Bobcats held the Mustangs to just three field goals and rolled to a 45-13 win Saturday night at The Corral.

“We were not ready to play,” lamented Mustangs coach Jason Keeler as his team fell to 2-2. “We just flat were not ready to play.”

South Effingham trailed 10-2 at the end of the first quarter and 19-7 at the half. Even with that deficit, Keeler held out a glimmer of hope.

“As poorly as we played in the first half, we were only down 12,” he said.

But the Bobcats (1-0, after their season opener Friday night against Ridgeland was suspended when the lights went out) outscored the Mustangs 17-1 in the third quarter.

“We made a lot of fundamental errors that are characteristic of a young team,” Keeler said. “From my end, I did a poor job of preparing them for a zone defense. We just did not execute.”

No Mustang player had more than three points —Justin Hatten, Jaron Mullins, Tanner Burch and Alex Reid each hit that mark. Louis Brown’s 12 points nearly matched the Mustang team total.

What dismayed Keeler was not that his players didn’t know what to do, but they couldn’t adapt to the situations on the floor.

“They haven’t learned how to make adjustments on the court,” he said. “But the real question is how are we going to react? As bad as it is, it’s over. That’s the same thing we say after a win, and we’re going to have to do that tonight, too.”