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AUGUSTA — The Spruce Mountain girls basketball team needed a boost in the second half of its Class C South semifinal Thursday afternoon.

The Phoenix responded with a 36-3 run, securing a trip to the regional final.

The top-seeded Phoenix cruised to a 67-25 victory over No. 5 Winthrop at the Augusta Civic Center. Spruce Mountain (19-1) will meet No. 3 Wells (18-2) at 7 p.m. Saturday in Augusta.

Junior forward Maddie Grimaldi led Spruce Mountain with 19 points, while junior guard Natasha McDonald added 14. Lilly Bellerose and Aisla Armandi each scored nine points.

“You’ve got to (win) however you’ve got to (win) in the tournament,” said Spruce Mountain coach Zach Keene. “As much as we would have liked to have played better in the first half, at some point in the tournament you have to respond to some adversity.”

Winthrop finished 10-10. Sophomore guard Evelyn Mortimer and junior guard Kylee Mansir each scored eight points.

Winthrop, which beat No. 4 Oak Hill 41-39 in the quarterfinals, went back-and-forth with the Phoenix early. Spruce Mountain entered the second quarter with a 15-14 lead and stretched the margin to 31-22 at halftime.

Still, the score was much closer than the Phoenix wanted.

“We started off really slow,” Grimaldi said. “It really took us all coming together and going, ‘Hey, we need to pick the energy up.’ We just came together and got it done.”

“That whole first half was a combination of us and a combination of Winthrop doing a really good job,” Keene added. “(The message at halftime) was, ‘How are we going to respond?’ They took it to heart and responded in the second half in a big way, which is exactly what we’re looking for.”

The second half was all Spruce Mountain. The Phoenix had a 21-0 run from the third quarter until midway through the fourth, and finished the game on a 9-0 run.

Grimaldi scored 17 of her 19 points in the second and third quarters.

“We’re really good at realizing when we need to figure it out,” Grimaldi said. “We just picked each other up and we moved the ball a lot better, we got aggressive on defense. We just did all the small things we weren’t doing before.”

Added Keene: “I’ve said it, I don’t know how many times, we’re lucky to have the players we have, and Maddie’s as good as anyone in the state, in my opinion. The healthier she gets, she just does everything so well. It felt like (she was good) at everything tonight. The rebounding, the scoring, she was defending. When she does all those things and she leads us that way, everyone else just settles in and makes the job a lot easier.”

The Phoenix had a strong game defensively, forcing 31 turnovers.