READFIELD — Winslow broke out of a first-half shooting slump in the third quarter of its Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class B game against Maranacook on Friday night and took over the game in the space of six minutes.
Four different players connected on 3-pointers in the third as the Black Raiders pulled away to a 63-48 win. Winslow is 7-5, while Maranacook falls to 4-8.
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The host Black Bears led 27-25 at the half but appeared in control with Kyle Boucher swatting or altering nearly every shot in the lane. The 6-foot-7 junior blocked five shots in the first half alone while grabbing six rebounds.
“You can’t go in the lane against him,” Winslow senior Justin Murray said. “He’s going to block pretty much anything.”
Winslow simply moved to the perimeter as Murray, Brandon Labrie, Caleb Hill and Trevor Lovely all buried 3-pointers in the quarter.
“We love it,” Murray said. “That’s pretty much our offense.”
Labrie and Murray hit 3-pointers in the final minute while Lovely hit a deep 3-pointer at the buzzer to give the Black Raiders a 48-34 lead in a quarter in which they outscored the Bears 23-5.
“We stopped going to Boucher, we started taking quick shots, we left their shooters wide open,” Maranacook coach Rob Schmidt said. “It was just a big mental breakdown.”
Maranacook concentrated on stopping Murray and Lovely and did a reasonable job as each player scored 12 points. They played a diamond and one on Murray for half the game, but this opened things up for junior center Austin Ireland (14 points, eight rebounds) and reserve forward Jesse Audet.
“We’re a team that relies a lot on the three-point shot and in the first half they just weren’t falling,” Winslow coach Jared Browne said. “Defensively, we were doing some things that we don’t usually do like reach out front. We tweaked some things in the second half and really emphasized taking away the middle.”
The Black Bears never recovered from their disastrous third quarter and fell behind by as many as 20 points in the fourth. Boucher finished with 14 points and nine rebounds to go with his five blocks while sophomore Taylor Wilbur scored 11 points. Audet finished with eight points, including a stretch of six straight in the second quarter, while Hill scored nine points.
“I feel like we’ve gotten better every single game,” Murray said. “Practices are getting better, we’re getting used to our coach and things seem to be coming together.”
Gary Hawkins — 621-5638
ghawkins@centralmaine.com
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