WISCASSET — Sometimes, a big win has consequences.

The Lisbon High School girls basketball team has been a bit of a funk since its big win over Monmouth a couple weeks ago, and Tuesday night in Wiscasset, it almost cost the Greyhounds a win. They held on, though, winning 36-25.

The one-win Wolverines held strong on defense and made points unusually hard to come by for Lisbon. With multiple lead changes and a plethora of turnovers, adjustments were aplenty on both ends.

Ultimately, points were just as hard to come by for Wiscasset, and it was the Greyhounds’ defense that earned the Mountain Valley Conference win.

“We’ve played kind of sloppy, honestly, for the last couple of games,” Lisbon coach Julie Petrie said. “Every team goes through peaks and valleys. We had a big up against Monmouth and I kind of knew it would happen — we might get a little excited about that. I told them tonight, ‘We need to take care of business and keep focus. Every game is a big game.’”

“We had a big win against Monmouth, and I think that kind of made us think that we could just go out,” Greyhounds freshman Gianna Russo said. “We’ve got to get it together and start beating teams like this so we can beat bigger teams.”

Lisbon (6-3) held a lead after each quarter of the game, but each time, Wiscasset (1-9) came back to tie it up. In the fourth quarter, it was a 22-20 lead that was erased on the first bucket of the frame from Hayhlee Craig.

After a free-throw, Russo responded with two straight buckets to give the Greyhounds the lead back (27-22) and force a Wolverines timeout.

“She’s really been a leader for us, a freshman,” Petrie said of Russo. “We’ve put a lot of weight on her back, but she’s a good player. She’s making the players around her better and she’s mature for a freshman. She’s do well creating, she’s doing a good job being the general of the floor.”

Lisbon locked down on defense from there, grabbing a pair of steals and forcing Wiscasset into fouls. Kaylin Le, who notched 10 points on the night and Kipri Steele (11 points) each hit a pair of free throws to ice the game.

For Petrie, it should have ended a lot sooner.

“We started off great offensively, that’s why I got so confused,” Petrie said. “We just kind of got into a funk. Late on, we tried to use our defense to create offense, but we kind of played tentative tonight. Hayhlee (Craig) had some great blocks, I don’t know if that was the factor. Just sloppy.”

With the baskets not falling, the Greyhounds turned to Plan B and kicked up the press on defense. At one point in the fourth quarter, with the lead still five points, they forced four Wiscasset turnovers in a row.

“‘We’re playing a little tentative, our shots aren’t falling right now, so let’s use are defensive intensity to create some offense,’” Petrie said. “That seemed to work.”

Back and forth

Russo stormed out of the gates and gave Lisbon a 7-0 lead on three straight buckets, including the game’s lone trey. From there, though, things went cold and Wiscasset slowly clawed its way into the game.

Inside buckets from Craig and Grace Webber got the Wolverines on the board and eventually it was 9-7 after one. Wiscasset was then stuck on seven points for almost four minutes.

“We need to make adjustments better,” Wiscasset coach Ben Clark said. “That’s just something we struggle with. When they came out ‘man’ in the second half, we struggled to handle that.

“Really, our adjustments were pretty simple. We wanted to get the ball to the middle of the floor because we knew they were vulnerable there. We were just trying to get the ball to the middle any way we could.”

Craig, a 5-fot-10 center, finished with 13 points and four rebounds. When the Wiscasset offense was working, Craig was in the middle, pulling defenders away from the lane or finishing put-backs. She scored five points and reached the free-throw line twice in the fourth quarter, but she was the only Wiscasset player to score in the frame.

“We’re pleased with how we played,” Clark said. “I thought they executed our gameplan, but we haven’t played in enough close games where we can execute down the stretch. We need to be better in those situations and we need to kind of put them in that situation more. I was pleased with how we played in general, but we just need to be better in the last couple minutes.”

Mallory Fairbanks, Le, Steele and Russo all notched points in the final frame for Lisbon, with Fairbanks earning a pair of key fouls down low and assisting Steele on a lay-in. She grabbed two offensive boards for the Greyhounds, while center Ali Sult pulled in five.

Lindsey Gordon tallied five points and Grace Webber three for Wiscasset, which is still looking up on the season.

“We want to improve every night,” Clark said. “Every night, we want to be better. We’re not giving up on this season. We might play the toughest schedule in the league. There’s a ton of Heal points on our schedule.

“For us, it’s can we start valuing the ball and not turn it over a million times. I think in the half-court, defensively we’re pretty good. We just have to make it that kind of game and we haven’t been able to do that.”

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