YARMOUTH – The frustration was obvious.

As shot after shot missed the basket, and Yarmouth began to pull away in the third quarter Friday night, you could see the angst in the Gray-New Gloucester girls’ basketball team.

Then you saw its experience.

The veteran Patriots settled down in the final quarter and used a decisive final eight minutes to secure a 43-33 victory over the Clippers in a WMC opener.

“Ever since seventh grade we’ve played together,” said Josalee Danieli, one of five senior starters. “We know what we’re all capable of doing. We know where each other’s going to be. I think it helps a lot.”

G-NG has been to the regional final three straight years and lost two state games during that span. Many of the Patriots have seen tough situations. So when Yarmouth built a six-point lead late in the third quarter, G-NG didn’t panic.

“I think we got frustrated, but we knew we just had to calm down our offense,” said Danieli, who led all scorers with 16 points. “Obviously our offense was not going very well for us, but we knew that we were playing very well defensively. We knew if we slowed it down and played our game, we’d be all set. We were rushing a lot of things, and I think we just needed to settle down.”

After two miserable quarters offensively, the Patriots got rolling in the final quarter. Their 10 consecutive points erased a 31-25 deficit to start the fourth. G-NG outscored Yarmouth 18-2 the rest of the way.

“The offense is new to us,” said G-NG coach Ken Butler. “It works well when we’re in sync and when we play against two six-footers, we have trouble with it. We tried to open it up and tried to space it out better. We wanted to make their size move away from the basket.”

G-NG started the second and third quarters missing its first nine shots and finished 4-for-30 during that span. In the fourth, the Patriots shot 6-for-8 while Yarmouth suddenly struggled, hitting just 2-of-11 tries.

“We tried to do too much,” said Yarmouth coach John Martin, whose team was playing without injured point guard Sara Hagstron. “I think they picked their defense up, but we made bad choices.”

Dawn Ross had eight points for G-NG while Christine Whittier finished with seven, six in the final quarter. Leanne Waterman chipped in six with some nice work off the bench. Yarmouth was led by Abby Akeley with nine while Melissa Moylan had eight.

Danieli started the fourth quarter run with a short jumper. Emily Baker followed with a fast break basket and Ross sank a pair of free throws to tie it at 31-31 with 5:31 left.

Baker made a nice play to steal the ball, setting up Whittier’s turnaround basket. After Whittier made a hustling move to avoid a turnover, Danieli was fouled and hit both free throws for a 35-31 lead. Yarmouth answered with a jumper from Moylan with 2:45 remaining, but Whittier answered with a basket in the post, and Danieli scored on a fast break on a Ross feed to build a 39-33 lead with 1:40 left.

G-NG opened the game building a 9-2 lead but watched the offense go cold.

“We were up 9-2, and I think they got lackadaisical,” said Butler. “They let it slip down and suddenly we were in a game.”

kmills@sunjournal.com

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