AUGUSTA — The Rangeley boys basketball team needed a perfect game. And a sluggish showing from its Greenville opponent.

It got neither. Greenville came in as the defending champion and top seed and played like it, scoring 21 of the first 23 points and never looking back en route to a 56-22 win in a Class D South quarterfinal game Saturday at the Augusta Civic Center.

“I figured it was going to go one of two ways,” Rangeley coach Jeff LaRochelle said. “We might get close and rattle them and get to play a little bit … (or) it’s going to go the way it did.”

Connor DiAngelo and Devin Boone led Greenville (17-2) with 14 points apiece, while Evan Bjork added nine.

Kyle LaRochelle scored seven points to lead Rangeley (9-10), while Ken Thompson scored six.

OVER IN A HURRY: The favored Lakers didn’t let the upset-hopeful Lakers hang around.

Greenville made nine of its first 13 shots, burying Rangeley with a 21-2 run to start the game. Greenville brought back all the key players from last year’s D South championship squad, and it showed as the Lakers were immune to the kinds of jitters that have rattled Civic Center favorites before.

“It was tremendous to see,” coach William Foley said. “(Our message was) don’t be looking beyond this. We don’t even talk about the next game. One game at a time.”

Boone scored the first six points of the game and eight of its first 11, and had nine points in the first quarter alone. DiAngelo scored eight in the period.

“We didn’t want to mess around,” Boone said. “We got out of the gate really quick. … We wanted to make a hard first impression to keep them off their game and keep them on their heels.”

HOT SHOTS: After beating Rangeley inside, Greenville turned to the outside shot to ramp up its lead.

The Lakers connected on five of their first seven shots of the second quarter, with four coming from beyond the arc. Bjork hit a pair of threes around a DiAngelo basket to make it 31-7 with 5:33 to go in the second quarter, and Noah Pratt canned another on the next possession to make it 34-7.

Greenville shot 6-of-9 for the second quarter, and 16-of-28 for the first half.

TURNOVERS, TURNOVERS: Rangeley didn’t give itself a chance to keep up with the sharpshooting Lakers.

Rangeley started the game with turnovers on its first two possessions, and the ballhandling didn’t improve from there. The Lakers had 20 first-half turnovers, with 11 in the first quarter and nine in the second. Rangeley went the first 3:15 of the second quarter without a shot attempt until LaRochelle buried a jumper to make it 34-9.

“You’re probably going to get 40-45 possessions, so do the math,” Coach LaRochelle said. “If you chuck the ball away 20 times, that’s half of your possessions. You might shoot 40 percent from the field, you’re not coming up on enough points with a team that hits threes, that has different guys that can hit threes.”

Nerves played a clear role in the turnover woes, as did Greenville’s defense, which keyed in on Kyle LaRochelle and doubled the ballhandler inside the arc, forcing bad passes and poor decisions.

“Our defense set the tone. A lot of times that will create opportunities for us offensively and get us going,” Foley said. “We focus on defense more than anything. … That’s our goal whenever we go out, keep them under 40.”

Drew Bonifant — 621-5638

dbonifant@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @dbonifantMTM