FARMINGTON — When the Mt. Blue and Skowhegan girls basketball teams played in Skowhegan last month, Mt. Blue took a close win. In the rematch on Tuesday night, the Cougars made it a runaway early.

Mt. Blue held Skowhegan to eight points in the first half, taking a 44-27 Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference win. Mt. Blue improved to 9-8, while Skowhegan dropped to 6-11.

“Great effort in the first half, actually, the first three quarters. I thought we did a tremendous job defensively in our 1-2-2 zone,” Mt. Blue coach Gavin Kane said. “We played extremely aggressively and I felt we had Skowhegan frustrated for sure in that first half.”

The Cougars closed the first half with a 14-0 run to take a 29-8 lead into the break. Caitlin Kane scored 11 of her game-high 14 points in the first half, but it was the Cougars’ zone that kept the Indians off balance.

“Recently, we’ve worked that defense a lot more. Hopefully, that can be a strong point for us,” coach Kane said.

Skowhegan committed 23 turnovers in the first half and 35 for the game.

“The last two games we’ve had 68 turnovers combined. It’s a huge problem,” Skowhegan coach Mike LeBlanc said. “We do not take care of the basketball. We don’t take care of the basketball in practice. We’ve been working on it. We’ve been talking about it. They’re young. They haven’t decided to put that energy in to focus on their basketball.”

Mt. Blue led by as much as 25 points in the third quarter. Skowhegan showed some improvement in the fourth, finally getting the ball into the high post, where the Indians could run their offense.

“Fourth quarter, we made a little run. We finally got the ball into the high post, which we’ve been preaching from the first timeout I called, and we scored a couple easy baskets,” LeBlanc said.

Olivia Ryan added 10 points for the Cougars. Alyssa Everett led Skowhegan with eight points and 11 rebounds.

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM

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