WINTHROP – Like a run-and-gun football team, the Winthrop Ramblers wanted to spread Livermore Falls out and utilize their quickness and quick-strike capability.
It took some time, but Winthrop finally pulled the Andies’ defense apart and dominated the second half for a 67-51 win Friday night.
Mike Gingras (19 points, five assists), Jason Allen (15 points, five steals) and Sam LeClerc (11 points, seven rebounds, four assists) turned in fine all-around performances to lead the Ramblers (7-3).
“We’ve got great shooters like Nate Damm and Corey Gillespie and Sam LeClerc that can just stroke the ball all night,” Gingras said.
Levi Armandi led the Andies with 14 points, while Brad Bryant added 12 and 10 boards.
The win was Winthrop’s sixth in a row after a 1-3 start.
“We’re not where we want to be yet, but we’re moving in the right direction,” said Winthrop first-year coach Dennis Dacus, whose team was coming off an impressive win over Telstar the night before. “We didn’t play well tonight, but good teams find a way to win when they don’t play well.”
The Ramblers overcame some second-quarter sloppiness against Livermore’s full-court zone that vaulted the Andies (1-10) into a 10-point lead.
“I knew if we ran our zone (offense) right, and with the shooters I’ve got, that we could make them come out of that zone,” Dacus said. “We wanted them (to come out of the zone) so we could run that spread. We knew we were quicker than them in most spots, and we finally got them out of the zone and things went our way in the second half.”
“The first half we played okay, but the second half, we didn’t come to play,” said Livermore Falls coach Ross Hamblin.
“We thought it was over at halftime. We were going halfway through the motions with our press and didn’t really give the same effort as in the first half.”
The Andies went on a 13-0 run to start the second quarter.
Derick Neal came off the bench and immediately started abusing Winthrop’s defense along the baseline for three quick scores to give LF a 27-17 lead.
Winthrop missed its first seven shots in the quarter and didn’t get on the board at all until Chip Burnham nailed a pair of free throws with 3:23 left. The Ramblers found the range after that, getting back-to-back 3-pointers from Allen and Nate Damm (nine points off the bench) plus a steal and layup from Allen, all in the course of less than a minute, to tie the game at 27.
Livermore Falls went into halftime with a 29-28 lead.
Damm got the Ramblers going again in the second half. His trey with 5:12 left in the third quarter put them ahead to stay with 5:12 left.
The Ramblers closed the quarter with a 12-2 run to put their lead into double digits at the end of the period, then added to the cushion when Gingras penetrated through the stretched-out Andies defense for back-to-back hoops to start the fourth.
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