LISBON FALLS – High school basketball is anything but predictable, but there’s at least one thing you can take to the bank – a 34-point difference in field goal percentage will often translate into a similar spread on the scoreboard.

Lisbon shot 57 percent from the floor, Dirigo 23 percent, and not surprisingly the Greyhounds walked out of Manchester Gym with a 75-41 win in the Mountain Valley Conference Thursday night.

The Greyhounds (5-4) sandwiched a 17-0 run around halftime to break open an eight-point game. Brendan McGivney led a balanced scoring attack with 16 points. Levi Ervin added 12 points and nine rebounds, Mike Wilkins 11 points, seven assists and six steals, and Evan Manocal 10 points. Mike Holmquist and Colby Knapp led Dirigo with eight points apiece.

Lisbon took advantage of Dirigo’s off-night shooting by keeping the Cougars off the offensive glass and getting easy baskets either in transition or by taking advantage of good inside position for McGivney and Ervin.

“We’ve been working on (running). We’d have the chance to get the outlet and go but we’d get the outlet and stop,” said Lisbon coach Doug Sautter. “I told the guys it’s easier to score three-on-two, or even three-on-three, than five-on-five every time. Tonight’s the best job we’ve done of getting the ball out and going.”

Dirigo (2-7) was coming off impressive back-to-back wins over Georges Valley and Mt. Abram, but the Cougars came out flat last night, making just one field goal in a dozen first quarter attempts and just one of their first 19 from the field. Holmquist finally got them on the board with a runner with 4:44 left in the first quarter, but they went the next eight minutes without another field goal.

“I don’t know how many shots we missed in the paint,” said Dirigo coach Don Hebert, whose team shot 16 percent in the first half. “We executed offensively. We just didn’t put the ball in the hole, and that hurt us because everything they threw at the basket went in.”

Not right away, though. Six-for-18 shooting by the Greyhounds helped keep the Cougars within shouting distance for the first 13 minutes. Dirigo pulled to within 20-12 on a Chris Richards bucket with 2:42 left in the first half, but Lisbon responded with a nice backdoor pass from Manocal to Chris Kates for a three-point play to begin the game-deciding run. Kates added another bucket and Ervin closed out the half with back-to-back hoops to give the Greyhounds a 29-12 margin at intermission.

“Defensively, our rotation did great,” Sautter said. “Holding them to 12 points in the first half, that’s the best defense we’ve played all year.”

Ervin picked up where he left off in the second half, as he and McGivney scored the first eight points of the quarter to extend Lisbon’s lead to 25. It was more of the the same for the Cougars, meanwhile, as they missed 10 of their first 11 shot attempts and found themselves down by 30 five minutes into the second half.