Portland High showed no mercy Friday night, overwhelming Lewiston with an offensive and defensive tsunami in a 56-0 win at Fitzpatrick Stadium.

When the artificial turf pebbles settled at halftime, Portland led 50-0 – a stark contrast to its 14-8 loss at Bonny Eagle a week ago when the Bulldogs played “selfish football,” according to Coach Sean Green and were guilty of gridiron sins like running backs not hitting designed holes, quarterbacks not following reads, offensive linemen not finishing blocks and defenders not running to the ball.

“It probably wasn’t a fun week to be a Portland football player,” Green said.

The message was received loud and clear, and now Portland is 3-1, back atop the Class A North standings, while Lewiston, at 2-1, will be trying to figure out what happened.

“We were ashamed of how we played,” said Portland tight end Carter Lucca. “We knew from film on Sunday, this is not us. We were letting them hit us before we hit them. We talked about the hammer and the nail. We were the nail a lot that week, not the hammer.”

Many Bulldogs delivered blows against Lewiston.

Louis Thurston completed 8 of 9 passes for 210 yards and three touchdowns. He was especially sharp on long passes down the left sideline to Cordell Jones (4 catches, 139 yards), and also mixed in two nice screen passes to Aidan McGowan, who had 34 receiving yards to go with 61 yards and touchdowns of 1 and 21 yards on the ground.

“If they line up one-on-one with Cordell or Aidan we know we can go deep,” Thurston said. “Coach put us in a great situation so we would get those one-on-one matchups and we worked them all week so all we had to do was execute the way we do in practice.”

Lucca caught the first touchdown pass, a well-designed 16-yard swing pass in the flat. With space to turn upfield, the 220-pound tight end covered the last half of the play by pushing, dismissing and overpowering Lewiston tacklers.

“Our goal was to come out here and win every aspect of the football game,” Lucca said. “I think we did.”

Jones caught Thurston’s other touchdown catches, covering 31 and 43 yards, the latter coming with 17 seconds left after Portland used two timeouts to try to score once more before halftime. Thurston, the holder on kicks, then chose to run the ball up the middle for a 2-point conversion from kick formation.

Portland’s defense, led by the play of Lucca, Lisandro Rodrigues and linemen Colin Kelly (fumble recovery), repeatedly pushed Lewiston backward. The Blue Devils had minus-18 yards in the first half. Portland finished with 358 total yards.

With Portland leading 28-0, Alex Martin came free on a safety blitz and walloped Lewiston quarterback Lonnie Thomas (2 of 7, minus-3 yards) for a loss of 7 yards. On the next play, the Lewiston running back seemed to take a sweep run at half speed. Two plays later, punter Ryker Paradis hesitated, then tried to run and was swallowed up at the 3 by Lucca. With 4:13 left in the first half, it was pretty clear the Blue Devils were done.

Portland was not. Rodrigues scored from the 3 on the next play. After another defensive stop, Portland moved 85 yards in four plays, with McGowan (8 carries, 61 yards, two touchdowns) taking it in untouched from 21 yards.

An interception by Portland’s Justin Charles with 36 seconds to play set up the Bulldogs’ final score before the half.

“We always talk about taking souls and instead of us taking souls, they kind of took ours,” said Lewiston Coach Jason Versey. “When that happens, it’s an awful thing to see and all we can do is huddle up, focus up and try to get better for next week. ”

In the fourth quarter, Portland backup quarterback Reece Wildes connected with Justin Bouchard for a 28-yard touchdown as Portland’s reserves scored against Lewiston’s first-team defense. As had happened more than once in the first half, the Portland receiver was uncovered as he ran deep into the Lewiston secondary.

“Obviously we had some lapse in communication and we had some breakdowns in coverage,” Versey said.