Girls basketball: Greely stuns Gray-New Gloucester in Class A quarterfinals

PORTLAND — Greely knew it was the underdog to Gray-New Gloucester in Monday’s Class A South quarterfinal.

The sixth-seeded Rangers, though, pulled off a 52-31 upset over the third-seeded Patriots at the Portland Expo.

“Not a lot of people thought we could win, and I don’t think we all thought we could win,” Greely coach Todd Flaherty said. “It was house money. Now, we have a day to focus and play (Brunswick)”

The Rangers (9-10) will face No. 2 Brunswick (17-2) in the semifinals at the Expo on Wednesday at 1 p.m.

Gray-New Gloucester (15-4) won both regular season matchups with Greely, 53-43 early in the season and a 68-26 thumping in late January.

“We might have lost a few games to them, but the tournament is where it starts,” Greely’s Asja Kelman said. “You have to come out 10 times harder, even at the half. Even if they come out hard, go harder.”

Not only is it difficult to beat a team three times in one season, Gray-New Gloucester coach Mike Andreasen said it’s tough to beat a good team three times in one season.

“The adage of beating a team three times, it’s hard because they make adjustments,” said Andreasen, who has coached Greely’s boys soccer team for several years. “Those kids — I am from that town — those kids are seasoned athletes. You got kids like Kylie Crocker, who has a state championship in lacrosse. Those kids know how to win.

“It’s not like we played some dopey team that didn’t know what they were doing. They were organized and played with house money.”

The Rangers (9-10) didn’t rely on one particular player to secure the victory. Instead, it was a group effort, as seven girls found the score sheet.

“That has to happen for us; we don’t have any 20-point scorers, so everybody needs to get five or six,” Flaherty said.

Lauren Hester paced the Rangers with 15 points and Kelman scored 14.

“We couldn’t find the basket; whenever we got something easy, it wasn’t easy,” Andreasen said.

The Rangers came out firing, with Lauren Hester hitting two 3s early on for a 6-2 lead.

“She’s a key aspect of our team; we appreciate her for that,” Kelman said. “She always puts in the effort, no matter what that means.”

Greely’s lead grew to 11-2 before the Patriots scored four points in the final two minutes to close the gap to 13-6 at the end of the first quarter.

The short break between periods didn’t hinder the Rangers’ momentum in the second.

Hester started another 9-2 run with a trey early in the quarter. Asja Kelman and Molly Partridge hit back-to-back 3-pointers shortly after to extend the lead to 22-8.

“I think our passion, we wanted this more than anybody else,” Hester said. “We knew we could do it; we have done it in the past. I think we wanted it so bad.”

A basket by Izzy Morelli and a 3 from Farrar got Gray-New Gloucester within 22-13 before the Rangers added four more points.

Morelli, who finished with 10 points to lead the Patriots, made another bucket and hit two foul shots and the Patriots went into halftime down 28-19.

“At halftime, down nine, we said, ‘We need to stop them and get a basket, but the opposite happened,” Andreasen said. “They scored, we had a stop and they scored again.”

Greely spread the scoring out in the third quarter, with six players recording a basket, and the Rangers outscored the Patriots 13-2 run in the period.

Gray-New Gloucester tried to stop Greely in the third by implementing a press defense.

The press started to work early in the fourth. The Patriots forced some turnovers and scored the first five points of the quarter.

“We had a lot of seniors on the floor; we have been through that before,” Flaherty said. “It has been our strength handling pressure, but we worked on it. It’s more a mental thing than a physical. After they made their little run, we made them pay for it.”

The Rangers relied on Hester and Kelman to get the Rangers back on track with an 8-0 run. The teams started to empty the benches shortly after as the game came to an end.

“The big court hurt us,” Andreasen said. “When they break the press, they had acres and acres — it wasn’t good. I don’t think we were overconfident; we were focusing on this game because we didn’t want to focus on the next game, because, as you know, there might not be a next game and for us — there isn’t.”