DEXTER, Maine — A change in defensive philosophy has helped the Bucksport boys basketball team get off to a fast start this season.
That philosophy switch featured an effective 2-3 zone on Monday night that propelled the Golden Bucks to a 40-35 victory over Dexter in a battle of Class C North contenders at Ed Guiski Gymnasium.
The win was the fifth straight for coach Larry Deans’ club, 7-2 and ranked among the top four teams in the division.
Dexter, which began the night seeded eighth, fell to 5-3.
“We’re playing a little more zone now, and they had a lot of trouble with that,” said Deans, who started five seniors against a Dexter club that countered with four juniors and a sophomore. “I thought they might because they’re a fairly young team.
“And offensively we got out and ran a little more, especially in the last three quarters,” he added. “We started making some shots, but we still left a lot of points up on the board with layups we missed.”
Neither team was all that accurate from the field, Bucksport at 33 percent (16 of 49) and Dexter at 29 percent (14 of 49).
But in the end Dexter was hurt even more by a 3-for-12 night at the free-throw line, the last miss after the Tigers had narrowed a 32-14 third-quarter deficit to 38-35 on a putback by C.J. Cooper with 28.2 seconds left in the game.
Bucksport countered the missed free throw with a press-breaking layup by Kyle Jackson to make it a five-point game, and Dexter came up empty on its next possession as time wound down.
“We’re not a bad shooting team,” said Dexter coach Peter Murray. “We can shoot it, but we just dug ourselves too deep a hole, and you can’t shoot free throws like that and expect to win games. That’s just a fact of basketball.”
Guard Austin Mason led Bucksport with a game-high 12 points, including back-to-back 3-pointers early in the third quarter to help the Golden Bucks extend a six-point (14-8) halftime lead to as many as 18 points on a Cody Larson 3-pointer with 1:39 left in the period.
Kyle Jackson added eight points and seven rebounds for Bucksport, Tyler Pye had seven points and 10 rebounds, and Hayden Craig had four points, five assists and four steals.
Riley McLeod, a 6-foot-5 center, contributed four points, nine rebounds, four blocked shots and a defensive presence in the middle of the Bucksport zone that was most pronounced in the first half when Dexter found its interior offense stymied and shot just 3 of 21 from the field.
Cooper, William Strauch, Zachary White and Brayden Miller led Dexter with six points each, with Miller adding nine rebounds, and White and Josh Simcock grabbing seven rebounds apiece.
“I think just about every team we’ve faced this year has played zone against us,” said Murray. “We’ve seen zone all year long, and I’m usually pretty happy when we see it.
“Tonight we got a little dysfunctional. Shots weren’t falling early, so people get frustrated, and then we start trying to do things that we don’t normally don’t do.”
