Patience and penalties. Mesa Red Mountain’s patience and Chandler Hamilton’s penalties led to a closer-than-expected first half Friday at Red Mountain.

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But once the third-ranked Huskies got penalties out of their system, they steamrolled the hosts in the second half with a punishing ground game and an overall potent offense in a 30-14 triumph in a 5A Division I nonregion game.

Hamilton coach Steve Belles has made a point the last couple of weeks to get lots of players involved on offense. Junior running back Zachery Bauman stood out Friday, rushing for 144 yards on 16 carries and scoring a touchdown. Bauman bulled his way to 112 of those yards in the second half, with four runs of 10 yards or more in the pivotal third period.

Bauman’s lone touchdown of the game came as Hamilton took the second-half kickoff and marched 80 yards in six plays to take command 17-7 just 2 1/2 minutes into the period. Red Mountain had momentum heading to halftime when it pieced together its only drive of the game to pull within 10-7 with 34 seconds left in the first half on a touchdown pass from Derek Mendoza to Joey Lancaster.

Red Mountain (2-2), which often in the past has utilized a no-huddle offense, took its time running plays as part of its game plan to stay with Hamilton (4-1). It was somewhat effective in the first half, combined with seven Hamilton penalties for 70 yards. The penalties mostly served to bog down Hamilton’s offense, which still managed to build a 10-0 lead less than 10 minutes into the game.

“Our intention was to be patient,” Red Mountain coach Jim Jones said. “It was fairly effective, but once they got going in the third quarter, they were tough. If you can stay within a score or so it’s manageable, but when they got up 23-7, we knew it was going to very tough.”

Hamilton made sure Red Mountain couldn’t employ patience in the second half. The Mountain Lions ran just five plays from scrimmage and on one of those turned the ball over via an interception by the Huskies’ Ryan Milus. Red Mountain had the ball for just seven of 24 minutes in the second half.

Meanwhile, Hamilton rushed for 154 yards in the third quarter and completed 6 of 7 passes it threw in the period.

Red Mountain, which gave up 595 yards passing last week, was carved up mostly on the ground in this one. Hamilton rushed for 375 yards and totaled 185 through the air. Quarterbacks Zakary Hambsch and Travis Dean each scored on short TD runs .