AUGUSTA — Livermore Falls hadn’t won a game on the Augusta Civic Center floor in over 20 years. It didn’t waste much time showing how much it wanted to end that trend.

The top-seeded Andies rushed out to a 15-1 lead, then used stingy defense to hold off pesky Georges Valley, 61-47, in the Western Class C boys’ quarterfinals.

Livermore Falls (16-3) will face No. 4 Hall-Dale in the semifinals at 8:30 p.m. Thursday. No. 9 Georges Valley finished its season 10-10.

Mike Armstrong and Chandler White led Livermore Falls with 20 points apiece, while Khyle Whittemore added nine points. Mike Wallace paced Georges Valley with 11 points.

“I was a little nervous on the bus ride here, and everyone was just looking at each other like, “Aw guys, we’re going to Augusta,'” Armstrong said. “But once we got out there, everyone just said, ‘We’re here. We’re going to work hard. We’re going to get this.’ All the jitters went away.”

For a team that had never played a tournament game at the ACC, this edition of the Andies made itself right at home immediately. Whittemore scored all of his points in the first quarter and Armstrong established himself in the paint and on the boards as they opened that 15-1 cushion 3:31 into the contest.

“We played three games here this Christmas, so that helped us get used to the backboards and the background,” White said.

Georges Valley didn’t score a field goal until Alex Grierson’s layup nearly four minutes in.  The Andies, meanwhile, were virtually flawless on the offensive end, not turning the ball over once and making 11 of 16 shots while building a 23-9 lead.

“I had no doubt, just knowing my guys, that we were going to do that,” Livermore Falls coach Travis Magnusson said. “I know how fired-up they were, coming out ready to go. That wasn’t a surprise.”

“We just got caught flat-footed,” Georges Valley coach Scott Johnson said. “We knew they were going to come out hard. They’re a good team. They’re fast. Livermore probably has a little more speed than we were ready for. But 15-1, we could have laid down, and we didn’t.”

Perhaps suffering the inevitable letdown, the Andies got sloppy in the second quarter. Livermore Falls turned the ball over eight times and the Bucs took advantage, shooting 6-for-12 from the floor in the quarter while trimming the deficit to 29-22 on a Wallace runner just before the end of the half.

“We stopped playing defense,” White said. “We have to keep our intensity for the whole game. They probably couldn’t handle our pressure.”

“We went in at halftime up seven and it seemed like we were down 10,” Magnusson said. “I just kept telling them playoff games are a battle. It’s going to be a battle no matter who you play. I told them I wanted the same energy. The second half, I think we started again where we got it up to 18. Georges Valley is a very good team. We had to play very well to win. We definitely did that in spurts, but without those spurts we would have been done.”

The Andies picked up the defensive intensity again in the third quarter, limiting the Bucs to just 2-for-14 shooting. Armstrong kicked off the game-deciding 12-2 run with a jumper, then White added a steal and layup to make it 37-25. A White layup off a Castonguay steal gave the Andies their biggest lead of the game, 45-27, with three minutes to go in the period.

“(Magnusson) told me and Derek that we needed to shut down Grierson, the big guy who last game got 25 rebounds (against St. Dom’s in the prelim),” Armstrong said. “I was like ‘You know what, I’m going to step up and challenge him. I’m going to shut down the paint and I’m going to get every rebound.'”

Grierson finished with four points and six boards. The Andies also held Logan Cross, who had 23 against St. Dom’s, to just two points.