AUBURN — It was an inside job all the way in a tumultuous second quarter — and Deering’s lead only grew in the third.

The Rams found a home underneath Edward Little’s net and built what looked like an insurmountable 16-point lead at the half, and carried their momentum into the third stanza.

But the Red Eddies got their second wind in the fourth quarter and began creeping up on the fast-and-furious Rams. Edward Little threw everything it had at Deering, but the Rams stood their ground and marched off with 76-62 victory in a Class AA boys’ basketball game Friday night.

At one point, the Rams (3-0) were out in front 57-36 and held the Red Eddies (1-2) to just 13 points for a third time in that third quarter.

“We pride ourselves on what we do well, and what we do well is press,” Deering coach Todd Wing said. “We switched it up from full-court to half-court, knowing that Mike is a good coach and was going to make adjustments at halftime, so we wanted to adjust to him.

“Hats off to his kids. They played hard. My kids, we have a long way to go. I think we have a lot of talent on our team. We are just trying to find what rotations work best because we can go deep into our bench and get everybody on the same page.

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“We had some mishaps late on offense and Edward Little capitalized on those. We are a fast team. Offensively, we have good ball movement. We did a good job verses their zone.”

But in the fourth, things got physical and the Red Eddies started getting on the Rams’ case.

Jarod Norcross Plourde dominated the Red Eddies’ offense, scoring 13 of his 17 points. Iman Samatar helped out with four of his game-high 22 points, CJ Jipson (10 points) knocked down one of his two 3-pointers and Tyler Morin contributed two points.

The Rams suddenly found themselves in a bit of struggle when EL closed to within 12 points. But Deering went to the inside again and Ben Williams (16 points) and Anthony Lobor (team-high 18 points) got the Rams back on course. Manny Chikuta scored 14 points for the Rams.

A handful of turnovers didn’t help Edward Little’s cause. At the foul line, the Red Eddies went 8-for-20 and missed a bunch of freebies, and those near-misses were also a thorn in their side.

“We didn’t do a very good job of stopping Williams,” Edward Little coach Mike Adams said. “He was a beast. We are OK defensively. We are not where we want to be, but what really is killing us is turnovers, which leads to other team’s scores.

“But we are a young team and we are learning. We went from not playing varsity to playing against two of the best teams in the state — Oxford Hills and Deering. Hopefully by February, they will be that much better.

“(Deering) just keeps coming at you It’s athlete after athlete and they can all run. They shot the ball better than I though they could and they pounded it inside.”


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