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AUGUSTA — The Winthrop boys basketball team entered its game with Dirigo on Wednesday night undefeated. In fact, there hadn’t been many times during the start to the season in which the Ramblers were even challenged.

Well, the Cougars challenged them. And how the Ramblers handled it won’t leave the rest of the class feeling any more confident about being the team that can beat them.

Winthrop fell behind Dirigo at the start of the third quarter, only to score 20 of the final 22 points of the frame en route to a 70-54 victory in the Capital City Hoop Classic.

“They’re resilient and they understand the timing of things and when to buckle down,” coach Todd MacArthur said. “They kind of had that look in their eye at halftime of ‘OK, it’s time to go, it’s time to do what we do.’ ”

Jacob Hickey scored 23 points for Winthrop (6-0), which came in looking like a Class C juggernaut and left the Augusta Civic Center floor looking like a juggernaut that had just learned a good thing about itself.

“I think it’s always good to (get a) test and see where you are in a season,” Hickey said. “Be down by a certain number of points, see if you can come back. You know you can practice it in practice but it’s not the same.”

It looked like another runaway early for Winthrop, which won four of its first five games by 20 or more points and which quickly scored the first eight points of the game. But Dirigo battled back to narrow the gap to 18-12 by first quarter’s end and caught fire to end the second, hitting three straight 3-pointers to square the score at 32 at halftime.

“Anything with Dirigo, I don’t care what their record is. It’s Dirigo,” MacArthur said. “They’ve got a lot of pride, tradition, they’re well-coached. … I’m not surprised out of any run that a Dirigo team makes.”

Still, MacArthur didn’t let the opportunity to lecture his team slide. The defense was “unacceptable,” he said, and he let the team know the fight it had become involved in.

“I discussed it at halftime and talked about how important it was … to come out and buckle down and put the game away and not let a team hang around,” MacArthur said. “I think they did that in the third; it helped us establish things.”

Not right away — Dirigo scored seven of the first 10 points to pull ahead 39-36 with five and a half minutes to go in the quarter. But while the Cougars were going wild on the bench, the Ramblers were receiving the message.

“It was a wake-up call,” Hickey said. “As a veteran team, we had our composure. Getting down, we’ve been in that position so we knew what it was like. We knew what we needed to do.”

The Cougars had no answer for what came next. Hickey hit a 3-pointer to tie it. Then Garrett Tsouprake had a layup to take the lead back. Dirigo pulled even again on free throws, but Bennett Brooks hit a jumper, Nate LeBlanc hit a three, Tsouprake hit two more shots in the paint, Jarred McLaughlin scored six points on back-to-back trips down and Andrew Pazdziorko hit a free throw in the closing seconds.

The result was a 20-2 run from Dirigo’s final lead on, with six different players contributing. Winthrop scored the final 15 points of the period to grab a 56-41 lead, turning a close game into a blowout in minutes. Dirigo’s basket to take the 39-36 lead was its final field goal of the quarter.

“We had to get back to really taking pride in our defense,” MacArthur said. “That helped us establish our run and kind of helped us put them away.”

It wasn’t a one-man show. Six players contributed to the run, with McLaughlin and Tsouprake scoring six points apiece. Tsouprake finished the game with 10 points, while Brooks and LeBlanc had eight and Pazdziorko, McLaughlin and Cam Wood scored seven.

“I think a great quality of this team this year is that we’re really deep,” Hickey said. “On any given night, we can go to a certain person, and it’s not just one person. … We have multiple kids that can put the ball in the basket.”

Dirigo closed to within 10 points in the fourth, but Hickey’s 10 points in the quarter, including a 7-of-8 effort from the free throw line, ensured there would be no rally.

“They really exposed us there in that second quarter of pulling our bigs out where they’re not comfortable,” MacArthur said. “We had to make some adjustments where we didn’t let them explore those situations as much in the second half.”

By game’s end, the close call was a distant memory — though one MacArthur hopes left an imprint in his players’ minds.

“Hopefully, this is a nice step in the right direction,” he said. “I’m very proud of the kids. … Things like this, as a coach, (you) go ‘OK, this is a step in the right direction of becoming the team we want to be a month and a half from now.’ “