LISBON — Dirigo and Lisbon went into Wednesday night’s Mountain Valley Conference boys basketball game with matching 1-2 records but started the game with markedly different intensity and shooting accuracy.
Dirigo missed six of its first seven shots to open the game and its first 12 to start the second quarter. Lisbon made five of its first six, then started the second quarter with a 13-0 run to build an insurmountable lead on its way to a 58-40 win.
Senior guard D.J. Douglass led all scorers with 20 points and added six rebounds and four assists for the Greyhounds (2-2). Sophomore forward Ring Ring chipped in 12 points and seven rebounds.
Freshman swingman Charlie Houghton paced Dirigo (1-3) with 16 points, while John Snowman added 11.
Lisbon roared out to a 10-2 lead early and led 12-5 at the end of the first quarter. Baskets by Mason Booker (seven points, six rebounds off the bench) and Ring to start the second quarter sent the lead into double digits and sparked the 13-0 run. Douglass banked a 3-pointer and converted on a pair of drives to the hoop and Corey Weirs hit a floater to make it 25-5 before Snowman finally ended the Cougars’ drought with a 10-footer with 2:30 left in the first half.
“Coming into the game one of the keys we had was rebounding, and I thought our guys did a tremendous job of blocking out and keeping them with one shot and out,” Lisbon coach Jake Gentle said. “They weren’t hitting their shots probably at their normal pace in the first half, but when you only give them one (shot), that helps keep them out of rhythm.”
“We focus on rebounding a ton in practice,” Douglass said. “That’s our biggest thing because we’ve got a bunch of big guys and we sub them in a lot. If we can use our size to our advantage, we’re hard to beat, especially with me and Corey on the outside.”
The Greyhounds shot 13-for-27 (48 percent) from the floor in the first half while the Cougars were 5-for-29 (17 percent). Lisbon also helped its cause at the charity stripe, making 12 of 13 in the game.
“I think a lot of (the slow start) was effort-based in the first half,” Dirigo coach Cody St. Germain said. “They probably got eight points right off the bat from fast break layups where we didn’t get back in transition. We’ve been doing a really good job at that the first few games, and all of a sudden we came out and just didn’t get back.”
Though he’s only played a few high school games, Lisbon was well aware of Houghton.
“We pretty much had to focus on the freshman — he’s legit, he’s a very good player — and Mateo (Lapointe). We knew if we could contain them we’d have a good chance of winning,” Douglass said. “They’re a good team. They have some young players and they’ll be exciting to watch in coming years, but I just think we have more experience.”
Snowman hit a 3-pointer to close the deficit to 17 before halftime, then added back-to-back treys to start the second half to pull the Cougars within 31-18. But that was as close as they could get.
“The second half, we wanted to come out and keep up our defensive intensity, which we did,” Gentle said. “We had three or four or five stops in a row, but then we didn’t score, so it was just kind of back and forth that way.”
Douglass hit a 3-pointer as part of his second straight nine-point quarter to help the Greyhounds widen the margin back to 17 at the end of three.
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