PORTLAND — Wells built a comfortable lead in the first half and then pulled away in the third quarter to beat Maranacook 44-29 in the Class B South boys’ basketball quarterfinal at the Portland Exposition Center on Saturday morning.

The Warriors led 19-9 at the end of a pedestrian half by both teams, but took complete control with an 18-4 third quarter.

Wells, the third seed in B South, advances to face the winner between No. 2 Spruce Mountain, which beat Lisbon on Saturday, in the semifinals Thursday at Cross Insurance Arena in Bangor.

“Third quarter was huge,” Wells coach Troy Brown said. “The last two years with this group, we’ve struggled in the third quarter. We’ve come out in games and let teams get away from us or let teams back in games, and today we didn’t do that.”

The Warriors entered the game knowing they should have an advantage in the post with Deandre Woods and Cameron Cousins. The inside game, particularly Woods, helped Wells grind out that 10-point halftime lead. In the third quarter, the Warriors were even bigger in the post.

“I thought they did a nice job of doubling our bigs, and we didn’t do a great job of passing in the first half,” Brown said. “Then my bigs started to realize if we square to the hoop, another big might be open. You saw it a little bit, you know, Deandre hit Cam, and then Cameron hit Tyler Bridge a couple times, and we started to open up a bit of a lead with some point-blank buckets.”

Woods led all scorers with 17 points. He also had eight rebounds, three on the offensive end. Cousins scored 13 points and grabbed eight rebounds, four of which were offensive.

“They really didn’t have an answer for us,” Woods said. “Me and him would were getting looks and we just capitalized on that.”

The Black Bears, meanwhile, struggled to make anything in the first three quarters, scoring only six in the first, three in the second and four in the third.

Part of that can be attributed to the Warriors, who altered their approach for the Expo Center.

“We’re a fast-break team, by nature, and we press, by nature, but on this big floor, we wanted to go straight man-to-man because we didn’t want to give up any easy buckets,” Brown said. “And I thought defensively we were pretty solid, I really did.

“We knew that Wilbur was their main scorer, I don’t know how many points he had, but it wasn’t many. Riley Dempsey, my best defender, really did a nice job.”

Kyle Wilbur finished with eight points for Maranacook (7-12). Silas Mohlar led the team with nine points by way of three 3-pointers.

Coach Rob Schmidt said his staff had the Black Bears making only 9 of 45 field goals in the game.

“One of those nights, I suppose,” Schmidt said. “There really isn’t anything (to attribute it to). You can say bigger building, whatever you want, but we have some good shooters who could not hit to night.

“Just one of those days, I guess.”

The Warriors (14-5) are facing the Phoenix (16-3) for the second time this season. They lost 59-51 in Jay on Dec. 30.

“It should be a good game,” Woods said. “We lost to them in the regular season up there, so it should be good.”

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