WINSLOW — Threatening. Relentless. Opportunistic. Efficient.

And perhaps most of all, if you’re an unwitting opponent of the Winslow boys soccer team, completely unpredictable.

“We don’t have set positions, so I think it makes it hard to game plan for us,” Winslow head coach Aaron Wolfe said after his fourth-seeded Black Raiders throttled No. 13 Mount Desert Island 7-1 in a Class B North preliminary round game Saturday at Kennebec Savings Bank Field.

“We’re all over the offensive third and it becomes hard to match that. You can game plan (defensively) for one side or for one or two people, and we can change it. That’s our biggest strength right there.”

To wit: Four different Winslow players accounted for goals in the first half alone, and a fifth — Daylon Carpenter — netted a hat trick in the second half despite not setting foot on the pitch over the first 40 minutes. Senior Jake Warn, last year’s playoff goal-scoring hero for the defending regional champions, scored once and assisted on four other Black Raider goals against the Trojans (4-11-0).

“I just look for goal-scoring opportunities,” said Warn, who had seven goals in four playoff games in 2016. “It doesn’t matter if I score or someone else scores. We’re in playoff time, so it’s just time to win.”

“He’s very unselfish. He does what the game dictates,” Wolfe said of Warn. “We try to counter-attack when we can and be quick, but we want to make the correct pass and not just the direct, play-ahead pass.”

It could well be that Winslow (12-3-0), which will host No. 12 Caribou in the regional quarterfinals on Wednesday, is a good regular-season team and an exceptional postseason one. The Black Raiders are on the front foot almost immediately, almost daring the oppostion to take an attacking risk and, thus, pay the consequences.

“We just love playing in an atmosphere,” Warn said. “Playoffs kind of add that. Everyone gets a little more excited, and we’ve got a lot of seniors which makes it even more exciting this year.”

A brilliant goal capped the first-half scoring off the foot of senior Matt Phillips in the 35th minute, a goal that best told the tale of Winslow’s ruthless efficiency. An MDI free kick from the left side of Winslow’s 18-yard box was cleared off the head of senior center back Mike Wildes to center midfielder Kaleb Burbank, and Burbank played it through for Phillips — who made a nice touch to split the MDI back line for Warn. Warn carried left and then crossed, where Phillips picked the ball out of mid-air for the 4-0 lead.

Six touches, 110 yards and a goal.

“We’re good on the ball, so we try and push through the middle and see if you can break lines in the defense to get into the final third,” Wildes said. “We’re a team that can adapt a lot. We can change our formation, change how we play, and put ourselves in the best position to win the game.”

Wildes opened the scoring for Winslow in the 16th minute, following near-misses from Jack Morneault (crossbar) and Isaac Lambrecht (left post) earlier in the contest. On 19 minutes, Lambrecht got himself on the board, and two minutes after that Warn drilled one home.

In the second half, MDI pulled one back in the 57th minute off the foot of Trevor Morrison, Winslow was far from done.

Carpenter scored in the 59th and 71st minutes, capping his three-goal effort with a successful penalty in the 77th minute.

“We came out pretty strong and we kind of caught them off-guard,” Warn said. “We just took advantage of that. … Once we got up early it kind of gave them a shock, and it’s hard to come back from that.”

Travis Barrett — 621-5621

tbarrett@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TBarrettGWC

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