DIXFIELD – At halftime Friday night, the Mt. Abram girls’ basketball team hit the reset button.

The Roadrunners had watched an early lead slip away and ended the half with one of their worst stretches of the season.

Going to the locker room may have been more like going to the woodshed, but Mt. Abram quickly regrouped and got on the right track in the second half in a 42-34 win over Dirigo.

“It was a composure thing,” said Mt. Abram senior guard Kenni Norton. “The second quarter was one of the worst quarters composure-wise that we’ve had all season. Everybody was going crazy. The crowd was loud. I think going to Augusta last year and playing in front of a big crowd, it made us realize we’ve seen this before. We knew we were okay. So we were like ‘That was the first half. It’s like a 1-0 game right now.’ We knew he had to start over and clear our heads.”

Mt. Abram (11-4) was ranked fifth in the Western C while Dirigo (12-5) was second. The Roadrunners held the Cougars to just five points and 2-for-10 from the floor in the final quarter.

“Dirigo’s been hotter than a cannon,” said Mt. Abram coach Doug Lisherness, whose team hosts Jay this afternoon. “To come over here and beat them on their home court, I’m very happy. Our girls did some very good things out there.”

Norton led the Roadrunners with 21 points while Mikayla Burbank had seven. Kylie Rolbiecki chipped in five points and did a superb defensive job on Dirigo’s Jane Hebert in the final quarter. Hebert finished with 15 and Tricia Turner added eight.

“We’ve got shooters on the team that I have confidence in,” said Dirigo coach Reggie Weston. “There’s five or six girls that can shoot from the outside. We actually wanted to get it inside, but we’re hesitant to get it in there. I had some girls post up pretty hard.”

Dirigo was down by as many as nine in the second quarter, but erased that deficit with a 14-2 run to end the half up 19-18. Mt. Abram had nine turnovers in the quarter and quickly unraveled. At one point, three Roadrunners were nursing three fouls. Burbank had four before halftime.

“I talked to them quite a bit about losing our composure,” said Lisherness. “We just had to go back out and get some momentum.”

The Roadrunners settled down in the third. Mt. Abram got the lead on a Norton steal, but a Morgan Hutchins basket tied it. A 3-pointer by Burbank and a free throw from Norton put the Roadrunners ahead. Mt. Abram maintained that to the end of the third, 32-29.

In the fourth, the Roadrunners defense took over. Dirigo managed just a Kristen Harvey jumper through the first seven minutes, hitting just one of its first eight shots.

Norton added to the lead with two free throws. Then her 3-pointer made it 37-29 with 5:30 left.

“CSI just came together,” said Norton about an acronym the team uses. “Doug tells us that C is for conditioning. Once we have condition than our shooting will come. When we start hitting our shots, the intensity will come. So when we hit our shots, everybody is like ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah and we’ll go go go.'”

Dirigo got the basket from Harvey, but the Roadrunners were able run the clock and hit free throws down the stretch. Rolbiecki blanked Hebert in the fourth, and the Cougars struggled against the zone, often rushing shots.

“Sometimes they start to panic a little bit instead of taking a little more patience,” said Weston. “They’ll take the shot without looking inside. We had some open looks inside.”