Aptos High center Owen Warmerdam forced San Domenico to switch defenses and teammate Nick Tovani took full advantage, as the Mariners rallied from an eight-point deficit to beat the host Panthers 67-54 in the first round of the CIF Division III NorCal Regional basketball playoffs on Tuesday night in San Anselmo.

The No. 9 seeded Mariners (25-5 overall) outscored their opponent 44-23 in the second half to secure the win and advance to the second round. They travel to Sunnyvale to take on No. 1 The King’s Academy (24-4) in Thursday’s second round at 7 p.m.

“We’ve scored 44 points in a half before this season, but not against a top-level team,” Mariners coach Brian Bowyer said. “We just had everything rolling in the second half. And we had eight assists in the second half, so we were sharing the ball.”

The Mariners caught no breaks after suffering a narrow loss to league rival Santa Cruz in the Central Coast Section D-III championship on Saturday. Aptos coaches thought the Mariners, the Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League champion, might be rewarded with a home game for their strength of schedule and solid record.

Instead, they were given a 2-hour bus ride to San Anselmo to take on the No. 8 Panthers (23-9), the runner-up in both the Bay Counties Athletic League’s West Division and North Coast Section’s D-III playoffs.

While the Mariners’ coaches though the seeding was bunk, they didn’t share their thoughts with their players.

“We didn’t bring it up,” Bowyer said. “We thought we’d get seeded a little bit differently than we did. We thought at least we’d a home game because of our record. But we didn’t want the kids to have that in their minds. We just said, ‘Lets go and get a win.’ “

Things didn’t look great for the Mariners in the first half of their NorCal opener, but they were running on all cylinders in the second half and turned the Panthers into road kill.

Senior guard Ryan Solorio scored 14 of his 20 points in the first half to keep the Mariners in the game early on.

San Domenico opened the game playing zone defense and switched to a 1-3-1 zone, which gave the Mariners fits in the second quarter. The Mariners trailed 31-23 at the half.

In the third quarter, Warmerdam made a couple of huge field goals and the Panthers abandoned their zone defense and returned to man. That’s when Tovani proved to be the man.

The senior guard, who had five points and six turnovers in the first half, buried five 3-pointers and scored 25 points in the second half. He finished with 30 points, five assists, and four rebounds.

Senior forward Isaiah Ackerman had 11 points, six rebounds, six assists, two steals and two blocks. Warmerdam finished with four points, five rebounds, and four blocks.

Ackerman guarded the Panthers’ top player, Gavin Early, a 6-4 senior forward who plays club for the Oakland Soldiers. Ackerman picked up two early fouls and was taken off the assignment.

Early did most of his damage with Ackerman handling a different defensive assignment. He finished with a team-high 26 points. Senior teammate Kris Jakstas made a pair of 3s and scored nine points.

“Defensively, we did a really good job on everybody except Early,” Bowyer said.

The Mariners will have their hands full in the second round against the top-seeded Knights, who edged Carmel 66-63 for the CCS D-IV title on Saturday. TKA beat No. 16 Pleasant Valley of Chico 68-47 in its NorCal opener Tuesday.

The Knights are led by senior wing Caedmon Dickson and junior guard Claxton Ladine, who both average 15.6 points per game, but also feature 6-4 freshman wing Boss Mhoon, who already has a scholarship offer from UC San Diego. They have five players averaging double digits in scoring.