St. Louis Catholic doubled down on defense after losing its first game of the season last week, and it paid off.

The Saints used a full-court press and a stifling defense to shut down Sulphur to win 68-25 Tuesday night at the Burton Coliseum.

St. Louis forced turnovers on the Tors’ first four possessions and jumped to a 9-0 lead.

“We practiced real hard on the defensive end,” St. Louis head coach Tony Johnson said. “We made some adjustments from a couple of games ago.

“We are playing hard on the defensive end. We play fast on the defensive end and it dictates our offensive game. We came out with that extra energy and worked hard on defense and we were able to score and get ahead of them early.”

St. Louis (5-1), the defending Division II state champion, gave up a season-high 59 points to undefeated Ponchatoula on Nov. 22, but has not allowed more than 45 since and is winning by an average of 24 points.

“After the Ponchatoula game we made some little changes on defense,” Johnson said. “Last week, after we lost to Ponchatoula, we came up on the defensive end and played real hard. The kids have bought into the defensive system and we just keep getting better game after game.”

Sulphur (2-3) turned the ball over 28 times and was held to 9 of 38 (23.6 percent). Sulphur trailed 38-9 at the break.

The Tors contained reigning Class 3A MVP Myca Trail to three points, but junior Paris Guillory and senior Tia Reder picked up the slack with 20 and 15 points, respectively. Reder added a game-high six steals. Trail had five assists and four rebounds.

“People are concentrating on stopping Trail,” Johnson said. “When they are concentrating on Trail like that it opens it up for everybody else.

“Tia Reder did a good job tonight of making the open shot because they were not guarding her. She is a senior and has been starting for three years, so we expect that out of her every night.

“Paris just does her thing every night in and night out. All nine that we rotate in there played a real good game tonight, and we were able to come up big time.”

The Tors didn’t attempt a shot until 3 minutes into the game and didn’t make a field goal until 4 seconds left in the opening quarter on a Journi Singleton basket under the bucket.

Singleton led Sulphur with 14 points and five rebounds.