GRAY — As the point guard for Fryeburg Academy, Bright Amoako has some major responsibilities to shoulder, not the least of which is making sure everyone on the Raiders’ veritable United Nations roster is on the same page.

Amoako showed how much of a glue guy he is against Gray-New Gloucester Tuesday night, stuffing the stat sheet with 18 points, 14 rebounds, five assists and two steals as the Raiders pulled away in the fourth quarter to a 44-33 victory.

“I have to make sure my teammates know what they’re doing and make sure they know the right spots to be in during the plays, and make sure on defense we have intensity and are talking,” said Amoako, a 6-foot-2 junior who has teammates from Serbia, Rwanda and China, in addition to the Fryeburg area.

Amoako and Walker Mallory (11 points) keyed a 10-0 run between the third and fourth quarters where the Raiders (2-9) pulled away from the young Patriots (1-8).

Fryeburg countered the Patriots’ zone defense by spreading the floor and attacking the gaps in the zone. That led to Amoako finding Mallory on the baseline for a couple of short jumpers during the game-changing run.

“With Bright, if we can spread another team out, he has the ability to get into the paint and either finish or drop it to somebody for a layup,” Fryeburg coach Sedge Saunders said. “He plays really hard and it’s infectious.”

Mallory’s first hoop kicked off the 10-0 spurt to inflate the lead to six late in the third. Amoako then collected a rebound off a Patriots miss, pushed the ball up the court coast-to-coast for a layup, taking a hit and falling to the floor (no foul called) as the buzzer sounded to end the quarter with the Raiders up 34-26.

“I wanted to pass it, give our big man the ball, but when I looked down I was too far to pass out, so I just went right up,” he said. “I got a little contact on it but it’s nothing. I’m from New York.”

Mallory blocked Austen Keenan’s 3-point attempt from the right wing to open the third, then converted a feed from Amoako to send the bulge into double digits for the first time all night. Back-to-back putbacks by Amoako made it 40-26 midway through the fourth.

Gray-New Gloucester hung around for three quarters despite shooting just 4-for-26 on 3-pointers. Sophomore Will Shafer hit three of those bombs on his way to a team-high 15 points, but none of the other Patriots could find the range against Fryeburg’s 2-3 zone.

“We knew we had to get to their shooters, and I thought we did an OK job, but it may have been a cold shooting night for Gray as well, and that certainly helped,” Saunders said.

“It’s been our problem all year,” Gray-NG coach Tony DiBiase said of his team’s perimeter shooting. “We’re very young and not physical enough to go inside. I thought we played what we can do. We’ve just got to shoot the ball from the perimeter because we have no inside game.”

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