LEWISTON — Subeer Osman felt the pressure — literally.

Clutched, grabbed and slowed by a tangle of legs, Osman fought through all of that and escaped around the left edge of the box. Finally clear, he booted the ball past Morse goalkeeper Charles Spear into the lower right corner of the cage.

“I didn’t care. I just kept on going,” Osman said. “We had a lot of speed. We were really fast and we had to use that.”

Osman’s goal in the eighth minute of the second half was the first of the game, and the only one his Lewiston squad would need as the Blue Devils went on to win their season-opener at Don Roux Field by a 2-0 margin over the Shipbuilders.

“(Osman) held his own, and he was getting hit,” Lewiston coach Mike McGraw said. “He held his own, he turned the corner, and that one goal, that one effort was enough to energize the rest of our team and we were able to play a little bit more free, a little bit more relaxed.”

That goal also forced Morse into an attack mode, as the Shipbuilders then had to come from behind.

The problem we’ve always had is moving the ball through the midfield,” Morse coach Kevin Bachman said. “I thought defensively we were OK, but we couldn’t get the ball through them and to the front.”

The other factor, Bachman said, was winning 50-50 balls.

“The biggest thing was, we weren’t as physical as they were,” Bachman said. “The whole first half, I don’t think we won one header, and it’s tough to win when you don’t have the ball, and it seemed like they always had it.”

In the opening frame, Lewiston had a sizeable lead in time of possession, but kept missing the net wide. Too many balls kept going to the middle, McGraw said. The Devils outshot their opponents 14-3 in the opening frame.

In the second half, Osman broke the ice with his big run around the left end, one of several to that side of the field on the afternoon. Just fewer than nine minutes later, Matt Beauparlant set up Shobow Saban with a rifle of a throw-in from the right sideline, nearly in the corner. The throw sailed to the far left post, about 12 yards out, and Saban redirected it into the cage for a 2-0 lead.

“I really started to work on that a lot over the summer,” Beauparlant said of his throw-in. “We had guys here last year who could do it even better than I can. It helps to have a weapon like that to use when we need it.”

Defensively, the Devils were stingy. Keeper Chris Jacques made three solid stops, but went largely untested over the 80-minute contest.

“For probably about 85 percent of the time, we had thing very well under control, but it’s still inconsistent,” McGraw said. “We still had breakdowns that they couldn’t capitalize on, and we have to clean that up.”

The low shot total, McGraw said, was a positive sign going forward.

“You attribute that to our players in the middle of the field who were able to win the ball, and the guys coming back helped out,” McGraw said. “We talked about taking away good scoring opportunities. If we can do that consistently, we’ll have a chance in every game.”