The Saints stay perfect with a 59-53 victory over NYA.
By Randy Whitehouse
Staff Writer

AUBURN – With three 6-foot-1 forwards in the starting lineup, St. Dom’s knows it has to earn its stripes on the boards.

“Every chance we get, we have to box out and work twice as hard because we’re half the size of the most of the teams that we play,” said Chris Rainville, one of those 6-1 forwards. “We’ve got some big teams coming up, Falmouth, Poland and a couple of more teams that have a lot of size, so we need to focus on boxing out and fundamentals.”

The Saints saw how those principles can work even against, or perhaps especially against, a similarly small team in North Yarmouth Academy Thursday night.

St. Dom’s dominated the glass, holding a 19-6 edge on the offensive boards, and took advantage of a 22-4 discrepancy at the free throw line to secure a 59-53 win over NYA inside a toasty Callahan Family Memorial Gymnasium.

With the win, the Saints are now 6-0, the best start in school history.

Chris Rainville led the Saints with 17 points, 13 rebounds (seven offensive) and five assists. Ian Pullen added 15 points, five boards and three steals. Tim DeLuca led the Panthers (6-3) with 31 points, while Brian Chin added 10 points and five blocks.

The Saints sprinted out to a 12-0 lead and never looked back. Seven of their first eight points came directly or indirectly off second chances via the offensive boards, as Rainville, Jimmy Mayo (four points, 11 rebounds, five offensive) and Nate Hamlyn (11 points) attacked the glass ferociously.

“Jimmy and Chris just get everything that comes their way,” said Saints’ co-coach Mike Gray. “It’s a big help knowing those two are there rebounding because it takes a lot of pressure off the guards when their shots aren’t falling, which they weren’t tonight.

“They’re small, but the Rainville kid especially killed us in the first half off the offensive glass,” said NYA coach Tom Robinson. “Spotting a team 12 points on the road to start a game, it’s kind of hard to battle back.”

NYA didn’t score until Luke Welch (eight points, seven rebounds, four steals) got the Panthers on the board just over five minutes into the game. The Saints maintained a 19-9 lead at the end of the first quarter despite shooting just 33 percent.

“Probably one of the things that’s helped us is our intensity going into the first and third quarters,” Rainville said. “We’ve outscored teams by 50-plus points overall throughout the season in the first and third quarters.”

It was more of the same in the second quarter. The Panthers got as close as seven on three occasions, but trailed by nine at halftime as St. Dom’s took excellent care of the basketball (two turnovers in the first half).

More second opportunities helped the Saints keep NYA at bay in the third. The Panthers pulled within five before Rainville scored consecutive hoops on a putback and then a nice feed from Pullen to put the margin back in double digits.

NYA closed the gap to single figures again just before the end of the quarter, but then Hamlyn was able to rebound his own missed 3 and throw it back in with a right-hand runner to make it an 11-point game going into the fourth quarter.

The Saints, using just a seven-man rotation, started to show some fatigue in the fourth, but shot well enough from the charity stripe (13-22 for the game) to keep the Panthers from making major inroads until it was too late.

“We didn’t go to the line until the fourth quarter,” Robinson said. “They’re not a real deep team, but the five guys they have that play are athletic, and they’re hard to press.”

“This is the first game that we haven’t hit five, six, or seven 3-pointers,” said Saints’ co-coach Dan DeBruin. “Our shooters had a cold night. The heat (in the gym) and fatigue got to them a little bit, but we found other ways to score, which will help us over the course of the season.”