The Mexico Bulldogs survived a bit of a scare last Tuesday.

 Hosting the Fulton Hornets, who the Bulldogs had previously beaten 73-61 in the Montgomery City Tournament, Mexico found itself unable to pull away.

 The back-and-forth contest was tied at 21 after the first quarter, and even with Daeye Miller hitting a shot as time expired at the half, the Bulldogs clung to just a two-point lead, 36-34.

 The second half was also closely contested, with head coach Darren Pappas saying the Bulldogs weren’t quite able to get out and run and were largely forced to play in the half court.

 “Don’t get me wrong, we scored 12 points in transition,” he explained. “But it was mainly in the half court. We had to really execute in the half court.”

 Mexico didn’t shoot great from outside, but the Bulldogs found success inside—scoring 42 points in the paint—and they took care of the basketball, committing just five total turnovers.

 “We took care of the basketball, we were able to score in the paint and we went to the line 22 times,” Pappas said. “We really put pressure on their interior defense to get to the line.”

 Despite the Bulldogs’ clean offensive approach, Fulton’s hot shooting kept the Hornets within arm’s reach throughout. The visitors knocked down 8 of 15 buckets from three and found themselves knotted at 59-59 as time expired.

 But in the overtime period, the Bulldogs showed why they’re undefeated and the No. 3 ranked team in the latest Class 4 Missouri Basketball Coaches Association poll, locking in on defense and getting to the rim to finish the game on a 9-2 run for a 68-61 victory.

 “We were able to get some consecutive stops and then able to execute our offense and really run some time off the clock,” said Pappas. “We were able to take what Fulton gave us and try to get to the hole as much as possible. We just didn’t settle for 3-pointers, we tried to put pressure on their interior.”

 Isaiah Reams led the team with 23 points, Michael White added 15, D.J. Long finished with 12, Miller scored 10 and Anthony Shivers and Peyton Willer tallied five and three points, respectively.

 “I thought Anthony Shivers gave us good minutes off the bench,” Pappas noted. “Even though he only had five points, he did a lot of things that we needed him to do.”

 Mexico followed the overtime thriller with a convincing beatdown of Bowling Green, handling the visitors 70-45 on Thursday.

 The Bulldogs hounded the Bobcats, forcing 29 turnovers, scoring 27 points in transition and 48 points in the paint.

 “Again, we took care of the basketball with only nine turnovers total,” explained Pappas. “Then we were able to put a lot of ball pressure on them and forced some steals by our rotations and doing different things defensively. Then when we got those steals we were able to capitalize.”

 The Bulldogs put together a well-rounded scoring effort, led by Reams with 16, 15 from Miller and Long and 14 from White. Willer added 6 points, Shivers finished with three and Dominic McKeown scored a point.

 Mexico improved to 10-0 on the year, with two big tests coming up, at Hickman on Friday and against Pattonville on Saturday in the Mid-Missouri Invitational at Harrisburg.

 “We’ve got our work cut out for us Friday at Hickman and then Saturday as well,” said Pappas. “We’ll see how we match up. When we went into the season we wanted to bulk up our schedule, and these two games this week will definitely show that we did that.”