READFIELD — In the first quarter Friday night, Maranacook couldn’t stop Poland big man John Fossett, who outscored the entire Black Bears roster in the period. After that, Maranacook stopped letting Fossett get the ball, and turned defense into offense on its way to a 57-54 victory in a Class B South boys’ basketball game.

Fossett scored from close range on Poland’s (2-1) first three possessions, as the Knights jumped out to a 6-2 lead. He scored the first eight points for the Knights, and totaled 14 in the first quarter as Poland led 18-13 after one period.

“We were moving the ball well, and he was making good dives and cuts toward the basket,” Poland head coach Tyler Tracy said. “It was a lot of John doing the work while the ball was moving around. It was a lot of his teammates getting him the ball, and moving the ball and getting into spots where we could get him looks.”

While Fossett had no trouble scoring, the Black Bears (3-0) did early on, as they fell behind 18-8. They cut the deficit to 24-23 with just over a minute left in the second quarter, however, as Kyle Wilbur made a pair of free throws to close out an 8-0 run.

The Knights pulled away slightly, taking a 28-23 lead into halftime, but Fossett was held to just three points in the second quarter.

“Maybe we should have doubled him a little bit more,” Maranacook head coach Rob Schmidt said, “but they’ve got a lot of weapons, so I didn’t really feel like it was a good idea to drop a guy down on him and give up open looks.”

The Black Bears showed they have a lot of weapons, too, in the third quarter, as they used a 14-0 run midway through the period to take a 39-30 lead. Wilbur, Kent Mohlar, Hayden Elwell and Levi Emery all made baskets in the third.

“These guys kind of woke up a little bit,” Schmidt said. “I think they realized what the score was and what the time of the game was, and they kicked it into a different gear.”

Maranacook’s other weapon was a suffocating pressure defense that forced Poland into repetitive turnovers.

“It’s our game,” Schmidt said. “We’re honestly not a great half-court team defensively or offensively. But if we can get up and pressure the ball, and get the court opened up a little bit, we’re a lot better.”

Tracy called it a “bad four minutes to start the third quarter.” The Knights got some help from their other big, Caleb Hodgkin, who scored six of his 11 points in the third to draw his team within 43-38 heading into the fourth quarter.

The Black Bears opened the final quarter with an Emery 2-pointer and a Mohlar 3 to stretch the lead to 10, but the Knights began to claw back. Patrick Kuklinski made a transition layup for his only two points of the night with 4:47 left, which cut the deficit to 50-47.

Kuklinski sat for much of the game with foul trouble, keeping one of Poland’s best ball handlers off the court against Maranacook’s press defense.

Tracy said his team handled the pressure better at the end of the game, and that meant more shots for Fossett, who finished his game-high 32-point effort with 11 points in the fourth.

His final points, on a layup with 30 seconds left, cut the score to 55-54. On the other end, Jason Brooks hit two free throws to give Maranacook a three-point lead with 10 seconds left. Kuklinski brought the ball into the front court before calling a timeout with 7.4 seconds left.

Brooks put the game away by diving to steal the inbounds pass, then passed the ball away to a teammate to run out the clock.

“The free throws were really key, because it put some distance in the final seconds,” Schmidt said. “As far as the steal, it’s just a good thing he didn’t commit a foul. That wouldn’t have been good.”

Despite his team being handed its first loss, Tracy found some bright spots in his team playing its third close game to start the season.

“It’s definitely building character,” Tracy said. “I think it shows how tough and how big our heart is right now, because we’ve been in some bad situations and we haven’t rolled over. We keep battling.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com

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