DIXFIELD — All was right in the Mountain Valley Conference’s corner of the basketball universe Monday night. Well, sort of.

Gavin Kane, arms gesturing with traffic cop frequency and feet rarely moving from their appointed place behind the thin, faded, navy blue sideline, was coaching again at DeFoe Gymnasium.

He was joined on the Spruce Mountain High School brain trust by longtime assistant Rebecca Fletcher, shouting instructions and analyzing and weighing the evidence with all the efficiency you’d expect from a point guard and science teacher. Over Kane’s other shoulder, Greg Gagne and Kip Fletcher’s years of expertise sat within shouting distance.

Twenty footsteps away, perhaps fewer, their combined handiwork of six symbolic state championship Gold Balls and 13 regional championships glistened in Dirigo High School’s sprawling trophy case.

“I really tried to downplay my coming here,” Kane said.

Back here, that is.

So, why is it they were cracking open dry-erase markers and tapping the water cooler on the visiting sideline, again?

Oh, don’t get me started. No, really. You‘re going to make me shred one of my primary New Year’s resolutions on Day Two.

At the risk of reopening all the wounds, here’s the sanitized summary.

Kane coached the Dirigo girls to 11 consecutive Western Maine championships and six overall Maine titles, the first state crown with Fletcher as his point guard.

In pursuit of a new challenge, he then took over the Dirigo boys, directing them to a regional championship in short order. After that he chased a lifelong dream, assisting Cindy Blodgett during her ill-fated final two years with the University of Maine women’s program.

Fletcher, hometown hero who has coached and taught at her alma mater since returning from college, ably and historically guided the Dirigo boys’ basketball team to its third straight Western Class C championship under its third different coach in February 2011.

Being head coach of a high-profile team (the irony being that she had a huge hand in constructing that culture and those expectations) wasn’t in Fletcher’s comfort zone. Kane, as serendipitous timing would have it, was high school job hunting on the home front after Blodgett’s firing, with Fletcher eager to hand him the baton.

Let’s leave it this: Dirigo, bound by a punitive, discriminatory and damaging policy in the RSU 10 teachers’ contract, didn’t bring them back.

Told you I was starting the year off nice.

Their loss is upstart Spruce Mountain’s gain. Two strong high school programs and two teeming feeder systems have merged with the marriage of convenience between Jay and Livermore Falls.

And if you think the future is bright for the Phoenix, how about the present?

Kane and Fletcher have taken a team with limited experience, spotty scoring punch, pedestrian quickness and height that doesn’t give anyone a propensity for nosebleeds and immediately molded the parts into a championship contender.

Spruce Mountain extended its program-christening winning streak to six games Monday night with a 51-32 dismantling of Dirigo.

Reduced full court pressure from the Phoenix and a few overdue deep breaths by the Cougars performed cosmetic surgery on that score in the second half. Dirigo’s finest moments came after Spruce Mountain basked in a 29-6 lead at intermission.

Yes, that’s right. Six.

“I think we finally settled down and proved to ourselves that we can play against them how we know we can play,” Dirigo coach Reggie Weston said. “That’s only going to help us down the road.”

The blessing/curse of that road for Dirigo is that it includes two more dates with Spruce Mountain, including an immediate encore Saturday in this gym.

Does anyone want to play a Kane-coached team that soon, or that often? Never mind a program whose history and tendencies he knows like the stretches of highway he burned up while commuting from Wilton to Orono.

Kane’s sway over a game is a classic demonstration of that old line, “He can beat yours with his, and he could beat his with yours.”

He concocts combinations of players who can orchestrate the lost art of motion offense without fear and without that universal proclivity for turnovers.

When the Phoenix do score, like a generation of Cougars before them, they apply a full-court press that creates the illusion of seven or eight sets of flailing arms instead of five.

And they win. Dirigo was only the second opponent to score more than 22 points against Spruce Mountain, which already has a comeback win over reigning Class C champion Hall-Dale in its hip pocket.

Both coaches downplayed the impact of the coaching crossover on the game. And it’s true, while the Kane era of 1994 to 2009 isn’t ancient history in this neighborhood, it’s surely older than many of the textbooks at Spruce.

“Some of the Dirigo kids, like Alyssa Wade and Paige Murphy, we had them at our summer camps when they were younger,” Kane said.

“I don’t think it was nerves. My daughters came up through Gavin’s program, so they know a lot of what we do because we do a lot of the same things,” Weston said. “We kind of mirror each other. Now we have a chance to go back and look at the tape.”

OK, guys.

They may believe it. I don‘t. Neither did the sold-out crowd shoehorned into the bleachers across from the two benches.

What else should we believe?

That Spruce Mountain girls’ basketball is can’t-miss basketball, whether it involves an emotional home-going or a 40-point victory at the awkwardly renamed Phoenix Dome.

And that Maine high school basketball is a better place with Gavin Kane in it. Even if he’s sitting on the wrong side of the scorer’s table.

— Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].