AUGUSTA — After pressing the snooze button on an early wakeup call, the Forest Hills boys basketball team was alert by the time Saturday’s second quarter got started.

The third-seeded Tigers opened the second period with 15 straight points — all of them from beyond the 3-point arc — and rode the momentum to a 66-48 Class D South regional quarterfinal win over No. 6 Temple Academy.

Senior Braidan Welch and eighth-grader Jaxson Desjardins led the charge for Forest Hills (14-5), who connected on 7 of 10 3-point attempts in the second quarter.  Welch netted a game-high 23 points, while Desjardins finished with 16.

The Tigers, who also swept a pair of regular-season matchups with Temple, will play No. 2 St. Dominic in the regional semifinals on Feb. 21.

“We were at the school by 5-5:15 (a.m.), you get on a bus at 5:30 to play a tournament game — think about that,” said Forest Hills coach Anthony Amero. “These kids hadn’t played in a while on top of that. It just took a little while to get their rhythm going. Once they got their shooting rhythm, you could see it, and they went on that run.”

Temple (9-10) looked game in the opening quarter. Nathan Corey drained a trio of 3-pointers in the period as part of a team-high 17-point effort, but his trey to hand the Bereans a 12-7 lead with 2:09 left were the final points the team would score until deep into the second.

“Coach got on us a little bit, and we realized that if we win this we still have practice and he can make us run for what we’re doing,” Welch said. “We locked in and made sure we weren’t running on Monday.”

A couple of hard-earned Cooper Daigle (14 points) buckets answered Corey’s start and touched off a 24-0 run for Forest Hills.

“We just locked in and kept putting the ball in the basket,” said Welch, who hit threes on three consecutive trips down the floor and accounted for 15 straight Forest Hills points himself at one stretch. “You miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, so we just kept taking them and waiting and waiting. Then they finally started falling.”

His 3-pointer with 4:39 left in the first half opened a 31-12 Tiger lead, and he capped the quarter with another trey for a 37-19 lead.

“We’ve been really working on getting shots off,” Amero said. “We’re not going to hold the ball and work it into the post. If you want to take away our 3-point shooters, we’re going in on 1-on-1 coverage, and we like those odds. That’s kind of the game plan, and we stuck to our philosophy.”

With Corey finding it harder to get open looks from distance, the Bereans turned inside to Peyton Reckards. Reckards ended up with 12 points and eight rebounds, but it wasn’t enough to reel the running Tigers back in.

Forest Hills wrapped up the third period with scores on six straight possessions as part of a 14-3 run that opened a 57-30 lead through 24 minutes.

“There’s always a point in the game where we feel like we go on a run that the other team can’t match,” Welch said. “It’s just part of basketball. Once we’re going, we’re going. We’re in a groove.”