ESCANABA — Gavin Peacock provided an unexpected scoring option for the Escanaba Eskymos on Tuesday night.

Peacock came off the bench when Jared Nash got into early foul trouble and provided a first-quarter spark for the Eskymos, who used that ignition to romp past Gwinn 75-47 in a nonconference boys basketball game.

Peacock, a slender 6-foot-6 senior, equaled his career high with 16 points, including nine in a three-minute span of the first quarter, to put Esky in control.

“Gavin Peacock came in and picked us up,” Esky coach Tracy Hudson said. “Gavin plays very well in a faster game. He really helped us offensively and gave us that third option in the first quarter.”

Escanaba’s usual 1-2 punch of Ryan Robinette and Tyler Willette still did their part, combining for 42 points. Robinette had 24 points, four assists and four steals while Willette, who signed a letter of intent to play basketball at Bay de Noc Community College after the game, added eight rebounds and seven steals to his 18 points.

The Eskymos forced 27 turnovers, wreaking havoc on Gwinn with an aggressive 1-3-1 zone defense. Gwinn (6-12) had 10 turnovers in the second quarter as the Eskymos broke the game open with a 13-0 flurry to start the period.

“They like to leak a guy out,” Gwinn coach Jim Finkbeiner said about Escanaba releasing a player while the defense forces a turnover.

Robinette was the catalyst on numerous breakouts, with Willette sending several passes upcourt after forcing a turnover.

“We get the deflection and we take off,” Hudson said. “We won the transition battle from the free throw line to the free throw line. We ran the floor well.”

While it did lead to some sloppy, ragged play later in the second quarter, Gwinn had trouble keeping up to that hectic pace and trailed 37-20 at the intermission.

Finkbeiner said his team averages around 15 turnovers, noting those kind of mistakes against the Esky zone “just kill you. We don’t see a zone very often. We took a couple of bad shots.”

Finkbeiner said his Modeltowners “started getting lazy” with long passes across the zone.

“We threw some lob passes and they are cheating on it,” he said. “We got a little rattled and that is when you fall back on old habits. They do a nice job in their zone. Tracy has them drilled.”

All that did is get the Eskymos into a feeding frenzy like circling sharks. With that kind of aggressiveness, Esky seldom had to set up on offense. Esky hit 31 of 62 shots, primarily in the paint expanded area, and only made 1 of 10 beyond the arc.

Gwinn’s Austin Forbes buried six triples and led all scorers with 26 points. Gwinn hit 17 of 53 field goals, with Tucker Taylor adding 13 points. Reed Wiedenhoefer, a 6-5 senior, was held to two points, about 14 below his average.

“We couldn’t find a way for him to score,” Finkbeiner said about Weidenhoefer. “Escanaba did a nice job keeping the ball out of his hands. They were tougher than us, stronger than us.”

Hudson said “our pressure on the ball pushed him away from the bucket. If the game slowed down, I thought they could hurt us on the blocks.”

The Eskymos also won the JV game, 73-40.