Thursday’s second meeting of the season was a bounce-back game of sorts for both teams, but Oxford Hills again came out on top, 48-37, in a KVAC Class AA North girls’ basketball contest.
The Vikings (11-1) made it past the halfway point of the season before falling on the road at Bangor on Monday, a game head coach Nate Pelletier said featured some bad shooting on his team’s part.
Freshman Julia Colby helped make sure that wouldn’t be the case again Thursday night, scoring five straight points to break a 4-4 tie and give the Vikings the lead for good. Erin Morton also scored five points in the first quarter, and Maighread Laliberte added four to push Oxford Hills ahead 16-11 after one quarter.
“You’re not sure how the girls would step it up, how things would change,” Pelletier said. “And when we came out in the first quarter, and the offense seemed to be clicking, I just felt like they had forgot about it.”
The Blue Devils (5-7) kept within striking distance for one quarter, but then fell behind even more after the Vikings started the second quarter with a 10-0 run. Turnovers kept Lewiston from matching the scoring pace.
“Their defensive pressure is good. Jules Colby put some pressure on our guards,” Lewiston coach Lynn Girouard said. “I think we got the ball into Victoria (Harris) pretty easily, but then it’s getting her to finish and getting our guards to be in the right spot if she does need to kick it out. She had to throw the ball out a couple times and we weren’t in the right spots.”
On the other end of the court, Girouard said her team wasn’t talking defensively, which allowed the Vikings to hit open jumpers.
Anna Piirainen had three-point plays of both varieties in the second quarter for Oxford Hills, which went into halftime up 30-20.
The senior hit another 3-pointer one minute into the third quarter to expand on the Vikings’ lead. Then it began shrinking.
Harris got hot down low, scoring five straight points, to cut it to 33-25. Maddy Foster added a three-point play and Harris later hit a pair of free throws to cut the deficit to 33-30 with 2:37 left in the third.
Oxford Hills had no answer for the Blue Devils’ junior big. Pelletier said even having injured sophomore big Jadah Adams on the floor wouldn’t have stopped Harris.
“I think Harris is a tough one to guard because she’s very physical inside,” Pelletier said. “But Jadah would have definitely helped us out offensively inside, which would have sort of counteracted that.”
Morton finally stopped the Lewiston run with a 3 with just over a minute to go in the period. Colby added a layup with three seconds left to stretch the lead to 38-30.
That salvaged what was an otherwise bad quarter offensively for Oxford Hills. An improvement for the Blue Devils’ defense played a role in that.
“The third quarter was probably our best quarter, I think. They were talking defensively, getting in the passing lanes,” Girouard said. “But we need to do that for four quarters, not just one.”
Things returned to the way they were in the first half in the fourth quarter. The Blue Devils started turning the ball over, and they didn’t put points on the board until Kasey Talarico’s layup with 2:15 left.
By that time, the game was out of reach. The Vikings made 8 of 14 free throws in the fourth — while making just one field goal — to keep a safe distance.
The score was still closer than the 51-29 loss the Blue Devils suffered at home against the Vikings in the season-opener.
“I definitely think it shows that we’ve improved, but there’s always room for improvement, and we definitely have some weaknesses with taking care of the ball,” Girouard said.
Harris scored a game-high 13 points for the Blue Devils, while Foster added eight.
Morton and Colby shared the Vikings’ team-high with 12 points, Laliberte was right behind with 11, and Piirainen added nine.
“That’s sort of been our M.O. all year. I have about four kids close to averaging 10 points,” Pelletier said. “It helps us, in a way, because it’s tough to defend us. You don’t know who you’re supposed to defend.”
wkramlich@sunjournal.com
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