BY MATT DIFILIPPO

BANGOR — By the time Wednesday night’s game was two minutes old, Cordelia Stewart had already received the Nia Irving treatment.

Stewart drew the assignment of guarding Lawrence’s star center, and quickly picked up two fouls. And if you’re playing for Bangor girls basketball coach Joe Johnson, that means you sit the rest of the half.

When the second half began, Stewart gave Lawrence the Cordelia Stewart treatment. She scored all 15 of her points in the second half, leading the way to Bangor’s 54-41 victory and Lawrence’s first loss of the season.

“I was just a little frustrated that it happened so quick,” Stewart said. “Coach has this motto: Two fouls, you sit the first half. It’s a good thing to keep us out of trouble. But I was ready to get back in there.”

Irving (18 points, nine rebounds) started the game on fire, scoring Lawrence’s first eight points and giving the Bulldogs an 8-5 lead. Bangor’s Sarah Bragg (11 points) hit a three to cap a 7-0 run, and the Rams led 12-8 when Irving had to sit down with her second foul.

Irving came back to play about four minutes in the second quarter, but it was Dominique Lewis (11 points) and Paige Belanger (10 points, 11 rebounds) providing the bulk of Lawrence’s offense. Bangor scored two points over a span of more than five minutes, and Johnson was tempted to get Stewart back on the floor.

“Very much so,” Johnson said. “Especially when they put Nia back in. But I’ve lived by that rule, and I don’t break it very often. She was well-rested, at the very least.”

A big reason Johnson didn’t have to roll the dice with Stewart was Mary Butler, who finished with 16 points and 11 rebounds. Butler had seven of Bangor’s eight points in the second quarter, and it was 24-24 at halftime.

It’s an exaggeration, but not by that much, to say that the first 39 seconds of the second half decided the game. That’s how long it took Stewart to score a three-point play and another basket, giving Bangor a 29-24 lead. By the end of the third quarter, the Rams led, 39-29.

While Lawrence could not get shots to fall (22 percent shooting in the second half and 24 percent for the game), Bangor was 9 for 15 from the floor after the break. The Rams launched 11 threes in the first half, and only three in the second.

“Our shots weren’t really falling in the first half,” Stewart said. “But we got it inside a little bit more, and I think that helped a little bit, to take it to the big people.”

Johnson said the emphasis on going inside after halftime wasn’t on his orders, but he wasn’t about to argue with the results.

“I didn’t even speak of that,” Johnson said. “Actually, I told our kids to keep shooting, because they looked like they took decent shots, and I thought they were all the right shots — sometimes they go in, sometimes they don’t. But I think they realized what they had in Cordelia, and started to work it inside.”

Lawrence got within 42-36 in the fourth quarter, but Stewart clinched things with a three-point play with 2:48 to go. The final margin got to 13 points because of Bangor’s poise and free-throw shooting, and also because the Bulldogs took a number of hurried shots while in catch-up mode.

Lawrence is still 15-1, and will face Bangor on Monday at the Augusta Civic Center in the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A championship game. When Lawrence coach John Donato was asked whether he was confident the Bulldogs could bounce back, he simply said, “Yeah. We have to. There’s no tomorrow.”

Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243

mdifilippo@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Matt_DiFilippo