Staff photo / Neel Madhavan Fitch’s Carter Owens (10) fires off a 3-point shot during Friday’s game against Harding in Warren.

WARREN — Warren G. Harding’s balance and depth was on full display Friday night.

The Raiders, who were playing their first game in 11 days and dealing with some early foul trouble, had four players score in double figures in a dominant 67-39 victory over All-American Conference rival Austintown Fitch.

Despite picking up three fouls in the first half, Chaz Coleman bounced back in the second half to lead Harding with 17 points. Myles Miller and Davion Herron each scored 12 points, while Jeremy Sampson, who also picked up three early fouls, added 10 points for the Raiders.

“I think that’s going to be something that we’re going to have to do moving forward,” Raiders head coach Keelyn Franklin said. “Obviously a lot of teams are going to key on Chaz and want to take him away. But I think it’s important that we have other guys get involved because we have other guys that can play. So I think as the year goes on, and people kind of focus on Chaz, that will allow other guys to kind of step up and make plays.”

The Raiders jumped out early and took a 16-8 lead by the end of the first quarter.

But as players started picking up fouls in the second quarter, that gave Fitch an opening with some of the Raiders key starters sitting on the bench.

Even after falling into an early hole, the Falcons kept pace with Harding and trailed by just seven at halftime thanks largely to Carter Owens, who scored 18 of Fitch’s first-half point total. Owens finished with 21 points to lead the Falcons.

“He was huge. I called him out after the game and basically said, ‘I thought you played fantastic,'” Fitch head coach Brian Beany said of Owens. “I challenged him before tonight’s game. I thought he got his shot back. That’s the Carter that we need to see all the time. But one guy can’t do it alone. … You need complimentary players to come in. I’m not saying everyone has to score 13, but when you get opportunities — I mean, three of our starters had seven points. That’s not a recipe to win.”

Harding blew things open in the third quarter by outscoring the Falcons 20-8 during the period.

The Raiders’ size and length on defense began to wear down Fitch’s offense and forced the Falcons to miss shots. Harding held Fitch to 22.0% (9-for-41) shooting from the floor.

Falcons’ leading scorer Marcel Finkley struggled, as well. He came in averaging 16.3 points per game, but finished with just eight points on 3-of-15 shooting against the Raiders.

“The last three or four games, we’ve gotten good looks, it’s just not falling,” Beany said. “The last three or four games, our defense has been pretty darn good, it’s kept us in games. But you can play the greatest defense in the world, you gotta put the ball in the bucket at times. I think as the second half wore on, we started to force a couple things.”

The Raiders started off with their full-court pressure in the first half. But after the early foul trouble, Franklin called off the dogs in the second half and had Harding just sit and defend in the half court.

It proved effective, as the Raiders limited Fitch to just 17 second-half points.

“We wanted to throw the kitchen sink at them. We wanted to throw all of our presses at them and just keep them off balance,” Franklin said. “But we started to get into foul trouble, so we had to taper that off. We just decided in the second half that we were going to play man-to-man. We were going to sit in our stance and keep our man out of the paint. Then when they shot it, we wanted to box out and go grab it. So I think we did a good job with just simplifying our game in the second half.”

Next up for Harding is a home affair against Howland on Tuesday at 7 p.m., while Fitch has a quick turnaround and will travel across the state line to visit Hickory (Pa.) on Saturday night at 7 p.m.