AUGUSTA — Turnovers aren’t always a fatal flaw against teams which feed off of them such as Lewiston and Cony.

Unfortunately for Lewiston, Cony was fresh off a hard lesson in how not to take an opponent’s mistakes for granted when the two teams met Wednesday at the Augusta Civic Center.

Cony took advantage of 18 first-half turnovers by the Blue Devils to build a 20-point lead, withstood Lewiston’s early second-half charge, then closed out a 67-55 win in a countable contest for Heal points at the Capital City Hoop Classic.

“We knew that going in they were going to make the game a mess,” Lewiston coach Tim Farrar said. “You can talk about it. You can practice it. But until you see it… We weren’t ready for it, obviously.”

The Blue Devils (0-6) don’t mind making games messy on occasion themselves and have had success in the past putting the pedal to the metal against the Rams.

“They’re really athletic,” Cony senior guard Jordan Roddy said. “We like playing against fast teams because that only plays to our strength. Slowing down can kind of make us struggle.”

Lewiston struggled against Cony’s defensive pressure, but many of the errors were self-inflicted. A coach who tells his players to slow down to try to avoid the miscues risks discouraging their aggressiveness.

“You’ve got to slow down for a couple of passes and then you’ve got to try to attack it. You’ve got to try to take advantage of those three-on-two and two-on-one situations,” Farrar said. “I think in the second quarter we got those and we still didn’t finish them.”

Jake Dacus did finish on all four of his shots from 3-point territory in the first half, the first three as the Rams (3-3) opened up a 21-13 lead at the end of the first quarter.

“It helped that Jake Dacus was 4-for-4 in the first half making threes. I think that gave us a little confidence,” Cony coach T.J. Maines said. “I liked our energy. I thought our guys were the aggressors. We’ve had an awful time with Lewiston the last two or three years. They’ve done nothing but kill us.”

Simon McCormick hit a 3-pointer to spark a 9-0 start to the second quarter for the Rams. The Blue Devils turned it over five times and missed their first four shots before Garrett Poussard (nine points, 11 rebounds) got them on the board midway through the period to make it 30-15.

Dacus answered with his fourth trey, though, and Cony ultimately extended its lead to 39-19 at halftime.

Maines keeps the pressure on by subbing five players at a time frequently at short intervals throughout the game, which can add to an opponent’s confusion. But as their 70-61 loss to Erskine last Thursday showed, the Rams need to be able to take advantage of the chaos they create.

“When we played Erskine, we forced 37 turnovers, but at halftime we had 11 steals and took two layups. We were jacking threes or looking at transition stuff,” Maines said. “Tonight in the first half, we took 19 two-pointers and only 14 3-pointers. That’s a balance that is often. We only took 21 (threes) in the game and before that our fewest was 35. This was a much better balance of trying to play fast, getting guys in and out but taking a little bit smarter shots.”

Lewiston cranked up its energy and its discipline to start the second half and, led by seven points from Desmond Jackson, pulled to within 47-35 on a Mohamed Mohamud drive with 3:27 left in the third.

Cony started to find the range, however, and closed the quarter with a 12-3 run.  Nate Parlin and Taylor Heath drilled 3-pointers and Roddy ended the period with a traditional three-point play to make it 59-38 heading to the fourth.

Parlin finished with a game-high 14 points to lead the Rams, while Roddy added 13 and Dacus added 12. Kym Torres led the Blue Devils with 13 points.

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