DIXFIELD – Despite being one of the top teams in the MVC this year, the young Winthrop Ramblers have struggled in pressure situations. Friday night, they turned the tables on a team that is all about pressure.
The Ramblers handled Dirigo’s full-court pressure with aplomb and controlled the second half to pick up a big 60-45 win before a packed house at Defoe Gymnasium.
“We’ve had two big games with Mountain Valley and Boothbay where we didn’t show up the way I thought we should have, and tonight we just came to play,” Winthrop coach Dennis Dacus said. “We made great decisions most of the night.”
“This is a turning point in our season,” said senior Tyler Smithgall, who shook off an ugly first half to finish with 15 points and 12 rebounds. “Now our main focus is Mountain Valley (who they play in two weeks). Because of this win, we’re not going to let up at all.”
Tim Gingras finished with a game-high 16 points, and along with brother Mike (13 points, four assists) and point guard Sam Leclerc (four points, six rebounds, five assists), attacked Dirigo’s vaunted full-court pressure for several easy baskets and few turnovers. Winthrop lost the ball just 16 times, while forcing 22 Dirigo turnovers.
“We knew they didn’t have a deep bench, so we just kept running,” Tim Gingras said. “Coach told us at halftime to keep it up and they were going to get tired.”
“I’v got to credit Winthrop for handling our fullcourt pressure pretty well,” said Dirigo coach Gavin Kane, whose team suffered it first loss to a Class C team this year.
“Both teams played exceptionally hard, but I thought they played hard and kept their heads on.”
The teams battled through eight ties and eight lead changes through the first 21 minutes. Behind Colby Knapp (12 points) Chris Richards (11 points, nine rebounds), the Cougars dominated the paint and the offensive glass in the first half and built their largest lead at 17-11 on a three-point play by Mike Holmquist (seven points, nine rebounds, five assists) early in the second quarter.
The Ramblers fought back to within two at halftime, then got Smithgall going offensively in the third quarter to take control.
They seized the lead for good at 30-28 midway through the third on a baseline hoop by the senior forward, then got a layup by Tim Gingras off a feed from Leclerc after the latter had broken the press.
“We haven’t seen (full court pressure from opponents) too much this year, and I was pretty excited about that, because I knew we could break it most of the time, which we did,” Dacus said.
Mike Gingras closed out a 10-2 run with a theft near midcourt, a nifty behind the back dribble to avoid and then draw contact from a defender for a three-point play that made it 38-30.
The Cougars cut the deficit in half by the end of the quarter on a putback by Richards and a hoop from Holmquist. That only made the Ramblers push harder on the gas pedal, and a 3-pointer by Nate Damm (10 points) gave them their first double-digit lead of the game at 48-38 with 4:30 left.
Dirigo pulled to within six again on a pair of Knapp buckets.
But the Gingras’ teamed up to beat the press for one last key hoop, a layup by Tim off a feed from Mike with 2:23 left that sparked a run of seven unanswered points that finished the Cougars off.
“I just feel like we were too jacked up for this game,” Kane said, “and because of that extra nervous energy we had, we made a lot of mistakes that were very uncharacteristic.”
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