Salisbury’s biggest challenge on the basketball court is dealing with teams that have height.

The Falcons ran into three teams with plenty of size during last week’s SportsFest A-Town Throwdown tournament at Cedar Beach. And while Salisbury lost all three games in pool play, head coach Jason Weaver saw some positives despite knowing the obstacle that was in front of his team.

“It was a tough draw for us,” Weaver said. “Liberty and North Hunterdon both made it to Sunday, and I think Liberty won a game. They were bigger schools, and we really struggled against pressure. We got pressed all three games. We got trapped. We got doubled. We struggled to limit our turnovers.”

Salisbury’s closest game of the tournament came on opening night when the Falcons fell 56-46 to Central Dauphin East. It was a game that Salisbury was within striking distance late in the second half, but ran out of gas at the end of the road.

The same was evident in the Falcons’ second game, coming early Saturday morning against a big North Hunterdon team. Salisbury once again was in the thick of things, trailing just 41-36 at halftime before North Hunterdon pulled away for a double-digit victory.

“We did some really good things, too,” Weaver said. “It was a five-point game with North Hunterdon at the half. Against CD East it was about eight points with five minutes to go. We scored some baskets and shot the ball well at times, but we just had too many turnovers and couldn’t get stops when we needed to.”

Much of that struggle to string together a couple of stops in a row was due to Salisbury’s inability to keep its opponents off the boards. It’s an issue that the Falcons won’t deal with as much in the Colonial League, at least not to the same extent as they have seen this summer. Weaver hopes this stretch prepares his team for a successful winter.

“The pressure was tough and size-wise, too, we really got hammered on the boards,” Weaver said. “We gave up a lot of offensive rebounds. We struggled to box out. There were some fundamental things that we can keep working on.

“North Hunterdon had one big guy that was probably 6-5. But he was pretty thick, and we struggled to keep him off the boards. Liberty had some size. CD East had two or three big guys as well.”

Liberty, which defeated Reading in Sunday’s single-elimination tournament and was one of the final eight teams standing, defeated Salisbury Saturday afternoon, 48-32.

The Falcons resumed summer league play on Tuesday against Southern Lehigh. Results were not available at time of press. They have two more games left, including Thursday against Faith Christian, before the playoffs begin.