LEWISTON – Oxford Hills nearly caught up to Lewiston in Saturday night’s meeting between two KVAC South unbeatens. But then Lewiston’s full-court defense caught up with Oxford Hills.
Leading by just two, the Blue Devils held the Vikings scoreless in the final two-and-a-half minutes and pulled away with a 65-50 win.
“When we needed it, we got our heads into it and finished up strong,” said Lewiston’s Jon Fournier, who scored 13 of his game-high 23 points in the third quarter. “We like to outrun teams. We run a lot in practice to get in shape for it. Up-tempo is kind of our style.”
“We don’t mind playing at that pace, but obviously they’re better at it than we are,” said Oxford Hills coach Scott Graffam. “It would behoove us to slow it down after we break the pressure. They have a way of doing that to us, though.”
Joe Stachowiak added 11 points and eight rebounds for Lewiston (3-0). Mike Foley led Oxford Hills with 14 points and eight boards, while Ben Ryerson added 13 points and Chris McVety 11 points.
Trailing by 15 to start the fourth quarter, the Vikings turned up their full court pressure and opened the period with a 13-0 run.
McVety, playing with four fouls, scored back-to-back hoops, the first one as part of a three-point play and the second off a nice feed over the top of the defense by Ethan Sutton. Foley then converted a layup off a steal to make it 50-48 Devils with 5:21 left.
That was as close as the Vikings would get, however. Jared Turcotte (seven points) stemmed the tide with a bucket. Foley answered with an inside hoop to cut the lead back to two, but then the Devils tightened the screws defensively. A Viking turnover, a couple of missed shots, and another turnover led to a three-point play by Turcotte and a pull-up jumper at the foul line by Abdinassir Abdi (seven points) with 2:06 left sent the Devils on their way.
“We had the momentum. That’s a good basketball team,” Graffam said. “We broke their fullcourt press pretty well in the first half and in the third quarter. But then after we made our run, we didn’t handle the pressure.”
“(The pressure) wears people down,” said Lewiston coach Pat Blais. “We play 10 or 11 guys. Not too many teams will play that many guys, so we can go out and run and run and run and press and press.”
The Vikings got some easy hoops off Lewiston’s press early on.
That helped negate some good work on the offensive boards by Stachowiak and Jon Mancine (six points, 10 rebounds) and kept the Vikes within 17-14 at the end of the first quarter.
Lewiston doubled its lead by halftime, and then Fournier ran off 11 straight points in the third quarter to give the Devils their 15-point cushion to start the final period.
“He’s had a hard time the first couple of games, but tonight he showed he’s a leader,” Blais said of Fournier. “He’s a leader of this team offensively and he’ll come out and be a leader of this team defensively, and that’s what we need from him.”
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