AMHERST – Naihmond Peters-Wolfe scored 32 points to power the Northampton boys basketball team past Amherst, 48-43, Friday night during the Pioneer Valley Tip Off at the Mullins Center.

Peters-Wolfe was busy from 3-point land as the senior sank 8-of-17 attempts from beyond the arc.

"We expect big things from him," Blue Devils head coach Reynaud Harp said.

Peters-Wolfe took home Player of the Game honors as Northampton's offensive catalyst.

The Blue Devils raced out to a 11-3 lead after the first quarter, with the Hurricanes' only points coming on a 3-pointer from Mitchell Carey.

"Slow start, I thought the first quarter we sent basketball back to the 1950s, we scored three points," Amherst head coach Jamahl Jackson said. "We sat on five [points] for a while, but then I think we found a little bit of a rhythm and it came from defense, rebounding."

The Hurricanes made it a five-point game by halftime as Northampton took a 21-16 lead into the intermission.

"Defensively for us, they started to exploit some of our matchups," Harp said. "The screen-and-roll started to give us problems. Some of the things that we hadn't worked on a lot they started to exploit and we were trying to catch up to them and figure out what they were doing."

Amherst evened the score at 32 a piece by the start of the fourth quarter and looked to be building toward a come-from-behind win.

Tied 41-41 with 1 minute, 42 seconds left in the game, the Blue Devils executed a pretty layup from underneath the hoop to regain the lead at 43-41.

Northampton scored seven of the game's final nine points, with a couple of huge steals helping the Blue Devils seal the victory.

"It's a sloppy game," Harp said. "These games, I love the rivalry. I know Amherst really well, their players, their coaching staff, it's a great game for us to play because we're so familiar with each other, but it's a tough time to play because we both just started."

Amherst showed some fight after its less-than-stellar first quarter, giving Jackson reasons to be hopeful of his team moving forward.

"I saw some promising things, I like the way we competed," Jackson said. "But we did a lot of things late in the game that hurt ourselves. Some missed free-throws, some missed putbacks, and again, we were very careless with the ball... we'll improve in those areas, but I'm optimistic about this team, we have some work to do.

"This team has nine seniors, but only two of them played varsity last year as juniors, so we have seven seniors where this is their first game of varsity," Jackson said.

Sabir Douglas played well for the Hurricanes on Friday and is one of those inexperienced seniors who saw limited time on the floor as a junior a season ago.

"He's one of our team captains and I thought he really, really settled in," Jackson said. "He should have a really good year for us, he's really steady."

Both teams are back in action on Monday. Northampton will travel to Pope Francis while Amherst will host Putnam.