WINTHROP – The Winthrop Ramblers aren’t just turning into a nemesis for the Mountain Valley Conference, they’re becoming a scorekeeper’s worst nightmare.
“That’s what we want,” said Winthrop coach Dennis Dacus.
The unbeaten Ramblers are averaging 75.5 points per game this season after posting a season high in their 86-68 handling of Telstar on Monday night. The win actually brought their average margin of victory from their previous three wins over Carrabec, George Valley and Livermore Falls down to 28 points per game, and it wasn’t exactly a thing of beauty in Dacus’ eyes.
“We didn’t play well tonight at all. I was just telling the guys we won on athleticism alone today,” Dacus said. “We didn’t execute well. We didn’t rotate well. All of the adjustments I made at halftime, I might as well have not even done em.”
The Ramblers’ athleticism was more than enough, as their full-court press forced 27 Rebel turnovers by keeping the ball out of the hands of Telstar star senior guard Sean Caddigan.
“The whole goal was to keep the ball out of Caddigan’s hands,” Dacus said. “If he didn’t have the ball, we were just denying any flash that he made. We wanted anybody else to dribble the ball up the floor.”
As a follow-up to torching Wiscasset for 49 points in a double-overtime win Saturday, Caddigan finished with a game-high 32 points and seven rebounds. But only nine of those points came in the first half while the Ramblers were building what proved to be an insurmountable lead.
The Rebels were able to find scoring elsewhere, particularly from Ryan Kimball (nine points) and Max Meader (eight points) and hang around until the final moments before intermission. That’s when turnovers off the Winthrop’s pressure led to quick hoops by Sam Leclerc (seven points, seven steals) and Tyler Smithgall and pushed the Winthrop lead into double digits, 42-29 at the half.
“We knew they were going to come full court. We were just going to break the press and take the layups when we had them,” Telstar coach Bill Caddigan said. “But turnovers killed us.”
When the turnovers weren’t killing them, Smithgall’s work on the offensive boards was. The senior finished with 21 points and 17 rebounds, with seven of those boards coming off the offensive glass.
“He played like a man possessed,” Dacus said. “He hasn’t got into foul trouble like he did last year. He’s making real good decisions on when to go for a rebound and when not to.”
Smithgall led four Ramblers in double figures. Nate Damm (18 points), Mike Gingras (15 points) and Tim Gingras (11 points) did most of their damage in the second half and kept the Rebels at bay even though Caddigan started to heat up, and the Ramblers started turning the ball over themselves.
Telstar only got to within single digits once, when Caddigan hit a 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter to make it 58-49. Five different Ramblers scored as Winthrop began the fourth quarter with a 10-1 run to put the game out of reach.
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