Offensively, the Vikings wanted to attack Lewiston junior forward Victoria Harris and get her in foul trouble. Defensively, they wanted to pressure the Blue Devils’ young guards to force turnovers and bad decisions.

Oxford Hills started making both parts of their plan come together almost immediately and rolled to a 51-29 victory.

Erin Morton, Jadah Adams and Julia Colby finished with 12 points apiece to lead the Vikings. Morton, a senior, and Colby, a freshman, caused even more havoc on the defensive end with their smothering defense on Lewiston’s backcourt.

“We have a lot of quick guards this year. It’s one of our strengths,” Morton said. “We’ve been playing a 2-3 zone for a few years now, but with the people we have now, we can really pressure the ball and it seemed to work tonight.”

Adams, a sophomore, took advantage of Harris being on the bench much of the game with foul trouble by grabbing nine rebounds, five off the offensive glass.

“The Harris girl is really good and we had to do some things to defend her,” Oxford Hills coach Nate Pelletier said. “I think, at least in the first half, we kept her at bay, mainly because she got in foul trouble.”

“They had her pegged, I think, from the beginning,” Lewiston coach Lynn Girouard said. “She’s an ‘x’ factor for us. (Oxford Hills) is tough defensively. I don’t think we were ready for them defensively. They put pressure on our guards and we didn’t handle the pressure very well tonight.”

Despite the foul trouble, Harris led the Blue Devils with eight points while Hannah Chaput added seven.

Lewiston seemed to withstand an early jab by Oxford Hills and rallied to pull within 12-11 on Morgan Eliasen’s three-point play with 3:01 left in the first quarter. 

But those would be the Blue Devils’ last points for more than seven minutes as the Vikings went on a 12-0 run.

“We’ve prided ourselves on our defense the last couple of weeks in our practices and it sort of came together today,” Pelletier said. “We were able to put some pressure on them, even in the halfcourt.”

Morton got the run started with a steal that she converted into a three-point play at the other end. Colby (four steals) followed with a steal and layup of her own to make it 19-11 at then end of the first quarter.

With Harris on the bench, the Vikings started taking the ball to the basket and pounding it inside, which also got them to the free-throw line. They made 9 of 10 from the charity stripe in the first half and opened up a 24-11 lead before Chaput briefly stemmed the tide with Lewiston’s first hoop of the quarter with 3:57 left in the half.

 “We’ve been practicing attacking all week, and we were hoping that eventually with help-side coming over we’d be able to give it to the person they left,” Morton said.

Harris returned to the court but soon had to do an about-face after a charge resulted in her third foul. 

“We always prepare for their strongest players and we just try to compose ourselves so that we can work on who’s going to be on them, how we’re going to play them and what are the strengths and weaknesses going to be for them,” Adams said. 

Oxford Hills ended the half with a 10-0 run, with Colby accounting for six of those points and Erin Eastman setting up Hannah Kenney with a nice pass for two more to send the Vikings into halftime with a 34-13 lead.

“We went in at halftime and I felt like every single one of them contributed somehow, whether it was a huge charge call against Harris to get her out of the game, an offensive rebound and kickout … As a whole, I thought we played very well as a team,” Pelletier said.

The Vikings shot 12 for 23 from the floor in the first half (52 percent) while limiting the Blue Devils to 5 for 19 from the field (26 percent).

Back-to-back putbacks by Adams made it 40-14 early in the third and essentially snuffed out any hope of a Blue Devils comeback.

Copy the Story Link