Perhaps there was going to be a changing of the guard in Intermountain Conference girls basketball. Through the first round of conference play, it certainly appeared that way.

And then Mountain View said: “Not so fast.”

In the second of three meetings between the top two teams in the IMC, Mountain View notched a resounding 79-52 win over Redmond Tuesday night to stay in the hunt to repeat as conference champions.

The Cougars (9-5, 4-1 IMC) and the Panthers (10-4, 4-1) now share the top spot in the IMC standings after splitting their first two games, and the third matchup on Feb. 12 looms large in determining the conference champion.

“We were really disappointed after that first loss,” said Mountain View senior Kasey Booster of the 58-54 loss to Redmond on Jan. 5. “Redmond is the team that everyone had their eye on for the IMC, we just didn’t want people to forget about us.”

Three different Mountain View players reached double-digits in the Cougars’ highest scoring game of the season Tuesday.

But it was on the defensive end, keeping the lethal-shooting Panthers at bay for the course of the game, that had Mountain View coach Jon Corbett excited after the game.

“As many points as we scored, I was super happy with our defensive effort,” Corbett said. “It was a high-possession game, a lot of points were going to be scored. We kept them down into the 40s until midway through the fourth quarter, which was an amazing defensive effort.”

Redmond has no shortage of talented guards who can put the ball in the basket at a high clip. Mountain View junior Kelsea Bomke and senior Lidia Jacobsen were given the tall task of guarding Redmond’s dynamic duo of Dylan Cheney and Mylaena Norton.

Bomke and Jacobsen held Cheney and Norton to a combined 10 points.

“To be able to put out the effort, the sustained effort, that we put out tonight was good because they are a very good basketball team,” Corbett said. “Last time we played, they were a little better defensively than we were. Tonight, we were a little better defensively than they were.”

The Panthers are deadly from behind the arc, which has helped them rise to the top of the IMC and state rankings in the first half of the season. But against Mountain View, open shots from 3-point land were hard to come by and they only made two 3s.

“They put good pressure on the ball. We got a little rattled early when we got down,” said Redmond coach Alex Carlson. “A lot of our stuff happens off drive-and-kicks and we weren’t passing the ball like we needed to. Credit to Mountain View, sometimes you get your butt kicked and that is what they gave us tonight.”

And then there was Booster.

The reigning IMC Player of the Year, who missed the first two weeks of the season with a leg injury, has returned to form.

The senior guard poured in 34 points, scoring in a variety of ways. She hit a pair of 3s, she was relentless driving to the basket and went 10-of-11 at the free throw line.

Of her 34 points, 20 of them came in the second half to help the Cougars swell their 13-point halftime lead to 23 going into the final quarter.

“Last game we played them I played a really good first half and then in the second half I didn’t play so well,” Booster said. “I was just challenging myself to have an all-around game the whole time. The second half, I emphasized on not shying away and taking control when we need to.”

But it wasn’t just Booster. Senior Avery Andrews finished with 14 points and was a dominant rebounder, and sophomore Aly Aragon hit four 3s and finished with 16 points.

“I was in a slump recently so I’m really happy about tonight,” Aragon said. “Tonight I finally broke the ice.”

Winners of four straight and now as full strength as they can be — though still missing two-year starter Ruby Haarberg to a season-ending injury — the Cougars feel as though they have turned a corner.

“With (Booster) gone we had to learn to mesh together and play without her,” Aragon said.

“And when she came back that just made us stronger. And we are finally showing it now.”

The Panthers were led by junior Azlynn Ure, who finished with 10 points, while senior Peyton Stewart and junior Maisen Porter each had eight points.

Though Redmond no longer sits alone atop the IMC standings and saw its seven-game winning streak snapped, Carlson knows that his team will learn from this game and bounce back.

“We just ran into a buzzsaw tonight,” Carlson said. “The credit goes to Mountain View, they came out ready to play. They are a good team. We have some things to work on. It wasn’t our best shooting night. We know what we need to work on and we know that we can play much better than this. This is great preparation for us.”