BUCKFIELD – Young as his team is, Buckfield coach Cam Cowett doesn’t mind an early-season loss to a Class D powerhouse as long as he sees improvement on the floor.

The Bucks gave their coach reason to be encouraged after battling back from a 19-point third-quarter deficit to throw a scare into North Yarmouth Academy before bowing 58-53 Wednesday night.

“The boys held in there, and they played a really good third quarter,” said Cowett, whose team has one senior in the regular rotation. “I think things are starting to come together. We can only draw positives out of this game.”

Tim DeLuca led NYA with 25 points, while Brian Chin added 21, along with six rebounds, four assists, four steals and four blocks. Danny Hayes paced the Bucks with 25 points and 12 rebounds off the bench, while Jamie Henderson chipped in with 12 points and nine boards.

The Panthers (4-1) kept trying to pull away from the Bucks (3-2), leading by as many as nine in the fourth quarter. Buckfield battled back to within four on a Henderson 3-pointer with 2:38 left and then to within three on a short Hayes jumper in the lane with two minutes to go. Mike Moody and Pak Lul combined to sink three-of-four from the charity stripe to make it a six-point game, though, with 34 seconds left, and the Panthers held on from there.

“I wouldn’t say we let them back in. They did some good things. They spread it out and they stopped turning the ball over,” said NYA coach Tom Robinson, who, like Cowett, has a young team. “We’ve got two kids that play a lot of minutes and score a lot of points for us. The other three are JV players from last year.”

Both teams suffered from cold shooting in the first half. The Panthers found their rhythm a little quicker behind Chin (14 in the first half) and clearly intimidated the Bucks in the paint with Chin and Nate Isaacson (four blocks) challenging virtually every shot. Buckfield shot 23 percent from the floor in the first half and trailed 27-18 at intermission.

“We’ve got some shot-blockers back there,” said Robinson, whose team had nine rejections. “Chin is a good leaper. I’d like to see more rebounding, but it’s hard to rebound out of a 1-3-1 trap.”

That trap did help force 25 Buckfield turnovers, however, and sparked NYA’s running game during a 12-0 run in the third quarter. Back-to-back treys by DeLuca and Chin put the Panthers up 39-20 three minutes into the third.

Buckfield responded with a 12-2 run of its own thanks to some tenacious work on the offensive glass by Hayes and Henderson. A putback by Hayes closed the gap to six before DeLuca banked a trey from about 23 feet at the buzzer.

“Hayes was just a powerhouse inside,” Cowett said. “We’d talked about their shotblockers ever since yesterday, talking about pump-faking. I think they learned after they ate it a few times. I think it was a good learning experience overall. I think we’ll go up from here.”