GRAY — Gray-New Gloucester was down two starters and two of its top-three scorers but still found a way to defeat Fryeburg 44-30 in Class A South girls basketball action Thursday night. 

Patriots (6-1) coach Mike Andreasen said he thinks the last time Gray-New Gloucester scored 31 points in a half, like it did Thursday in the first half against the Raiders (2-3), was during the 2019 season. 

Alyssa Howard and Isabelle Ross both scored seven first-half points for Gray-NG while Emma West added six points. 

West was the only senior playing for the Patriots as Brooke Martin, the team’s third-highest scorer, was out on Thursday. Alexandra Portas, a sophomore and Gray-NG’s top scorer this season, was also out. 

Ross converted a layup and was fouled with 2:23 left in the first quarter. The made free throw put the Patriots up 14-6 on Fryeburg. 

Sydney Shaw scored five of her 11 points in the first quarter to keep the Raiders afloat. A layup by Shaw helped Fryeburg make it 15-9 heading into the second quarter. 

“Sydney has transferred over from Kennett High School (in North Conway, New Hampshire) and she moves the ball well and sees the floor well,” Fryeburg coach Billie L’Heureux said. 

Fryeburg hasn’t had a full team all season and played its first game in more than three weeks on Thursday. COVID cases, quarantines and postponed games have scrambled the Raiders’ season. 

“My kids will never give up, they’ll keep fighting,” L’Heureux said. “We’ve just been struggling a bit because of the COVID debacle and so we haven’t had a full squad yet. This is our first game since December 21. We are a little out of sync, our rotations are different every game, so we are trying to put it together. They’re going to work hard regardless.”

In the second quarter, the Patriots quickly scored six points to take a 21-9 lead just 90 seconds into the period. Howard scored six of her 11 points in the second quarter and made good of a rare start. The junior also grabbed 10 boards.

“This is a kid that hasn’t put in a lot of minutes for us, but she got the start,” Andreasen said. “She was here at 2 p.m. for an optional shootaround and then she played the JV game. She just wants to play basketball. It’s the fact that she showed me in more ways than one that I like her energy. She is always asking me questions, she’s always here first to practice and shoot and sometimes you need to reward that, and she showed up tonight.”

Fryeburg’s Brooke Emery scored five points in the second quarter and kept the Raiders within 31-19 at halftime. 

“Brooke has just come back, she was out for a bit,” L’Heureux said. “She’s still trying to get her wind back and she was playing a bit out of her position. She sometimes likes it, depending on how she shoots, but she was rusty.”

The two teams tied 6-6 in the third quarter, locking up players who had scored often in the first half. At the end of the third quarter, Gray-NG had a 37-25 lead. 

“The old adage, ‘Taking your foot off the gas.’ We got a lead and tried to hold it and I think we did a little bit of that,” Andreasen said. “Part of it was I thought Fryeburg in the second half amped up their defense. I thought their defense was good. Unfortunately for them, I thought our defense was good.”

Howard scored four points in the fourth and played solid defense to help the Patriots outscore the Raiders 7-5 in the final frame. 

“We were without our starting guard, another point guard off the bench, so without two guards you tend not to dribble as much,” Andreasen said. “We passed it and did a good job with that. We have to bring them back and keep it going. We found the post, we went big tonight and we started Alyssa and Caitlin Taylor instead of just Caitlin, and it worked. It created like a two-headed monster for them and it was pretty effective.” 

Taylor finished with nine points in the win. 

Shaw scored 11 points and Emery finished with 10 for Fryeburg.

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