BANGOR, Maine — The Bangor and Edward Little of Auburn girls basketball teams matched up in their season opener Friday night as Class AA North rivals both looking to establish an offensive identity.
Those efforts remain works in progress, but Edward Little’s defensive pressure proved to be the difference as the defending regional champions pulled away to a 34-19 victory at Red Barry Gymnasium.
Just three players scored for the Red Eddies. Junior guard Piper Norcross led the way with 13 points, and sophomore guard Grace Fontaine had 11 points, four assists and four steals, and senior center Jordyn Richards scored 10 points and grabbed 13 rebounds.
“We’re not a lot better offensively than that,” said Edward Little head coach Craig Jipson. “We’re going to have to win with defense night in and night out. I’d like to score a little more off our press and transition, but we’ve got a team where it’s going to be a war every night because we’re not going to score 70 points.”
Edward Little used a full-court press and half-court zone defenses to force 21 Bangor turnovers while limiting the Rams to 25 field-goal attempts.
And when Bangor did get the ball near the basket, it made just five of 25 shots.
“We turned the ball over too much, a lot of unforced errors,” said Bangor head coach Joe Johnson. “The bottom line is we did that and we didn’t shoot well, and you put those together, and you’re going to have a tough time.”
The game featured two of the better post players in the region in Edward Little’s Jordyn Reynolds and Bangor senior Katie Butler, and they largely negated each other for much of the game.
But Fontaine, Norcross and backcourt mates Kaylee Jipson and Chantelle Ouellette sustained Edward Little’s defensive pressure, and the Red Eddies capitalized enough offensively despite shooting just 33 percent (15 of 45) from the field to lead from start to finish.
Butler had seven first-half points to keep Bangor within 14-10 at intermission, and the Rams then pulled within a single basket when Butler scored on a press-breaking runner for the first points of the second half for either team nearly three minutes into the third quarter.
Edward Little then put the game away with a 17-2 blitz that featured four points and four assists from Fontaine, seven points by Norcross and Reynolds finally finding some open spaces in the low post after a two-point first half.
Edward Little led 26-14 at the end of the third period, with a Norcross 3-pointer eventually capping off the run and giving the Red Eddies a 31-14 cushion with 5:23 to play.
“I loved how we played defensively, and Fontaine really came through with some spurts for us,” Jipson said.
Butler paced Bangor with 10 points and 10 rebounds, Megan Connor added five points, and Sarah Dumas and Emma Payne scored two points apiece.
“We came into this thinking it would be a 50-50 game, I joked around at school that they might have been a field-goal favorite because they were at home,” said Jipson. “I think Bangor’s a very good team. They’re going to be a lot better a month from now, and I hope we are, too.”
