BANGOR — The sixth-seeded Winslow High School girls basketball team overcame a size disadvantage with swarming defense, exceptional quickness and tenacious rebounding to upset No. 3 Mount Desert Island 55-34 in a Class B North quarterfinal at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor on Friday night.
The Raiders used a 15-2 spurt spanning the first and second quarters to build a 24-8 lead and led by as many as 32 points in the second half before the Trojans made a fourth-quarter run.
Winslow, now 15-5, will take on second seed John Bapst of Bangor, 15-4, in Wednesday’s 2:05 semifinal.
The Raiders outrebounded MDI 33-18 and forced 19 turnovers, including 14 in the first half as they built a 35-12 intermission lead. Winslow had a 19-9 rebounding advantage over the first 16 minutes.
Senior forward Haley Ward paced coach Lindsey Withee’s 15-5 Raiders with 13 points, five rebounds and two steals and junior guard Maeghan Bernard contributed nine points, five rebounds and two steals. Broghan Gagnon came off the bench to produce eight points and four rebounds; Weslee Littlefield had seven points and three rebounds and Paige Trask had six points, four rebounds and two steals.
Sarah Guimond collected four rebounds and two steals along with four points.
Maddy Candage led 14-5 MDI with nine points and a game-high seven rebounds. Julia Watras had five points and three steals and Alexis Clarito had five points. Emily Banks had four points and three rebounds.
“We played real well. We’re playing great basketball right now,” said Ward. “We knew we had to play good defense and we knew we had to execute and we did. We knew we were at a size disadvantage as we were all year so we had to buckle down.”
“This was one of our best games of the season,” said Littlefield who added that their impressive rebounding can be attributed to the fact “we do rebounding drills every practice.”
“We came out firing tonight. We focused on boxing out and we really looked to attack once we got the defensive rebound,” said Withee.
The Raiders passed the ball with precision which produced a lot of open shots from all over the court.
“They did a good job pressuring us. They took us out of a lot of things we wanted to do,” said MDI coach Brent Barker. “Give them credit. They outplayed us. They made more plays than we did.”
Follow BDN Maine Sports on Facebook for the latest in Maine high school and college sports.