The Dirigo Cougars have made no secret of their desire for revenge when they meet Lee Academy for the Class C boys’ state championship on Saturday (8:45 p.m., Augusta Civic Center).

It probably hasn’t made any difference to the Cougars this week to learn that this is a very different Lee Academy team from the one that defeated them, 65-55, last year at the Bangor Auditorium for the school’s first Gold Ball.

The Pandas’ path to the championship game left clues that they aren’t as dominant as last year, when they won their last 17 in a row and steamrolled the Eastern Maine tournament field by an average of 28 points.

This year, it was 13 points per game, including surviving a double-overtime semifinal battle with Penquis. Perhaps fatigued from that game, top-seeded Lee (19-2) trailed seventh-seeded Houlton by five points at halftime of the regional final the next night.

Dirigo, meanwhile, rolled through the Western Maine tournament, which signals a shift in the matchup from last year, according to Lee coach Randy Harris.

“I would probably say the roles are reversed,” he said. “I think last year probably most people thought going in that we were the favorite and they were the underdog. I would say those roles probably reversed this year just based on scores. Last year, we walked through our tournament. This year, we probably didn’t dominate the East like they dominated the West.”

The Pandas have two of their top six players from last year — 5-foot-10 senior guard Jasil Elder and 5-foot-8 senior guard Dustin Sawtelle. Most notable among the departures are Harris’ son, A.J., who torched the Cougars for a game-high 27 points, and 6-foot-7 sophomore center Daniel He. Harris graduated, He transferred.

Harris and He helped the Pandas dominate the Cougars in the paint last year. Without them, coach Harris is concerned about how his team will match up with Western C tournament MVP Cody St. Germain and Ben Holmes.

“Last year, we had good inside play. This year, we pretty much start five guards,” he said.

Harris said the Pandas, who averaged 65.6 ppg, aren’t interested in slowing their game down to throw off the up-tempo Cougars.

“That’s not our style. We don’t like that,” said Harris, whose team got its first look at the Augusta Civic Center with a midweek practice. “I don’t think we’ll try to play that way. I think we’ll probably try to score, too.”

The Pandas did hold the ball for extended stretches of each overtime session against Penquis. But they normally try to take advantage of their athleticism at both ends. Dirigo can expect that to encounter an active half-court trap when it has the ball.

“We might not be quite as deep as we were last year so we haven’t pressed like we have in the past,” Harris said. “We’re more of a half-court team, try to grind it out defensively. We like to get out and run offensively but we haven’t pressed as much as in the past.”

Senior guard D.J. Johnson, a 6-foot-2 transfer from Hampden Academy, was the co-MVP of the Eastern C tournament and is the Pandas’ leading scorer (15 ppg). Sophomore 6-foot-3 guard Boubacar Diallo was their second-leading scorer in the regular season (14 ppg) but averaged a team-leading 18.3 ppg in the tournament. The Pandas counter the 6-foot-4 St. Germain with 6-foot-4 senior Haris Karagic.

Lee is the latest centerpiece in the ongoing debate over private vs. public school participation in Maine high school tournaments. The topic has been particularly hot on basketball message boards,with allegations of recruiting being hurled at the school and racial epithets and personal attacks being directed at the Lee players and Harris.

Harris said he isn’t worried about the conflict being a distraction to his team.

“The kids bring it up on occasion and some of them get fired up over it, but our boarding kids don’t really pay much attention to it so they don’t really know what’s going on. It’s just water off our back and we just keep playing,”  he said.