AUGUSTA — Upset-minded Madison tested top-seeded Dirigo for a half, but the Cougars rolled past the Bulldogs to a 66-46 victory in a Class C South quarterfinal Monday at the Augusta Civic Center.
Dirigo coach Cody St. Germain said the Cougars, the defending state champions, are making sure they don’t look past any opponents.
“We talked about taking it one game at a time, and we know Madison is very well-coached and their team always gets after it,” St. Germain said. “We knew we needed to match their intensity, and I feel like at times we did and at times we played pretty lazy on defense for how we normally play. Luckily, we put the ball in the hoop in the second half, and we move on to the next game.”
Dakota Tompkins led Dirigo (18-1) with 19 points, while Trent Holman and Charlie Houghton each had 14 points.
Tompkins said the Cougars are good at spreading the ball around and have multiple players averaging more than 10 points per game.
“We are a very well-(balanced) team that can score,” Tompkins said. “We have five players with double digits this year.”
Callan Franzose led eight-seeded Madison (12-8) with 15 points.
The Cougars will play fifth-seeded Mt. Abram (17-3) in the regional semifinals on Wednesday at 3:30 p.m. The Roadrunners defeated Old Orchard Beach in the quarterfinals.
The first quarter of Monday’s game started with 6-0 runs by both teams. Dirigo’s Trent Holman scored the game’s first points and Tompkins later added his first bucket to give the Cougars a 6-0 lead.
Madison responded with six straight points, tying the game 6-6.
During the remainder of the first quarter, the teams traded baskets, and Dirigo took a 12-10 advantage into the second quarter.
Franzose and Nathan Cornforth opened the second with back-to-back buckets to give Madison a 14-12 lead.
Cornforth finished the game with seven points.
The teams battled back and forth in the middle part of the second. The Cougars started to build a lead when a field goal by Houghton and a trey by Tompkins made it 22-17.
“We felt they always guarded Charlie pretty well and they put a lot of pressure on him inside,” St. Germain said. “It seemed to be on film that Dakota is often who they were leaving (open). Actually, in the first quarter looking back at the stats, he didn’t shoot the ball very well and missed quite a few open 3s. But knowing he had so many open shots as the game went along, they would start to fall.”
Franzose cut the Bulldogs’ deficit to 25-22 later in the second quarter, but Tompkins ended the half with another 3-pointer for a 28-22 lead.
Fast breaks and turnovers helped the Cougars begin to pull away in the third quarter. Tompkins’ scored four of Dirigo’s first six points in the period, extending the lead to 34-22 and forcing Madison to call a timeout 97 seconds into the second half.
“Once we start running, if we slow down, I feel like our offense comes a lot better to us,” Tompkins said.
The Bulldogs’ attempt to regroup didn’t slow down the Cougars. Charlie Houghton started to heat up and scored eight points in the third.
St. Germain said Dirigo didn’t need Houghton to score a lot of points Monday.
“This isn’t a matchup necessarily that we needed him to go get 25 for us,” St. Germain said. “We more needed him to make the right play for us — which he’s been doing all year long.”
Dirigo’s lead was up to 48-30 after three quarters.
Madison was unable to make a big dent in that lead in the final eight minutes, during which both teams made several trips to the free throw line.
Brode Strout scored five of eight points in the fourth quarter for Madison. Six players scored in the fourth quarter for Dirigo.
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