DAPHNE, Alabama — The Admirals improved their overall record to 7-2 with a convincing home basketball win over Gulf Shores 42-26 Tuesday night.

Bayside built on a 13-10 first period advantage and a 29-16 half-time lead before the Dolphins had a two-point better margin in the third to close the gap to 35-24 to start the final eight minutes. But the Admirals delay game and pressure defense held on for the win

The Bayside Band of Brothers scored 22 of the Admirals’ total. Dakota Brodie led the Bayside attack with 12 points, his brother Channing Brodie added 10 while Spencer Newman had nine and his brother Nelson Newman five while David Deneefe led the Admirals’ defense with five steals. Isaac Ronan led Gulf Shores with eight points. Daniel LaBorde and Ben Martin added four each. The Dolphins shot 75 percent at the free-throw line while the Admirals were good for 9-of-13 at the stripe.

The Admirals will host Satsuma High’s 5A Gators Saturday at 3 p.m., at Bayside Academy’s Moorer Gym. The ‘Phins (2-5) will host the Lions of Williamson High School at 7:30 p.m., at The Tank, in their first 5A Area 3 match-up of the season Friday night.

Playing without an injured Garris Goe who often spells Dakota Brodie in the post, Bayside coach Ralph Watson was pleased with his team’s defense for limiting the Dolphins’ scoring.

“Anytime you only score 42 points against a team as good as Gulf Shores and still come away with a win is probably because your defense could play well enough to hold a good team like them to under 30 points,” he said. “So, I’m very pleased with the defense tonight and overall with how well we executed. I thought Dakota had a big night for us. David Deneefe gave us a nice lift on defense. He really kind of energizes us with his play. We missed Garris Goe tonight inside. He's been playing well for us with a six-four body that helps give us more presence inside, especially against a physical team with good size like Gulf Shores. But I thought we managed to keep the pressure up and then handled the ball well. I also liked the way we held our composure. All that resulted in managing the lead well which is always important.

“But in general we still need to improve in a lot of areas. We played well tonight, but we’ve been inconsistent. We've won some that were kind of sloppy wins actually and you can’t count on that. Streaky is the word I’m looking for.

“We’ve been streaky and gotten away with it some, but we want to strive to be a good team and consistency is a big part of that as we head into the area (3A Area 1) in January.”