FAIRFIELD — Perimeter shooting and strong guard play has been the calling card of the Lawrence girls basketball team for several seasons running. But that outside game only opens up when the Bulldogs find their footing down low.
Sarah Poli scored a game-high 14 points and Savannah Weston added 10 of her own on a night when three Bulldogs reached double figures, and Lawrence turned up the wick in the second half en route to a 52-46 win over Erskine in a Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference Class A game Thursday night at Folsom Gym. After a flat start, the Bulldogs improved to 6-4 by taking the matchup between two of the top five teams in the Class A North standings entering the night.
“It wasn’t a pretty win, but it was a great win,” Lawrence coach Greg Chesley said. “Give Erskine all kinds of credit, they’re a great team. But I think we showed one-day rest coming back (from Tuesday) and we were a little flat. We needed a little pick-me-up.”
Poli finished with a double-double after grabbing 10 rebounds, and Megan Curtis poured in 12 points including a pair of 3-pointers.
For Erskine (5-5), Mackenzie Roderick and Jordan Linscott each finished with 12 points. Emily Clark added eight more.
Weston, a senior, was a catalyst for Lawrence, particularly with eight of her 10 points coming in the third quarter to help the Bulldogs erase a two-point halftime deficit. She had nine rebounds.
The teams traded the lead 11 times in the period, at one point scoring on nine consecutive possessions between them.
Junior Alyssa Bourque’s 3-pointer from the right corner with 55 seconds left in the third gave Lawrence the lead for good, 43-40.
“We put bodies on people, boxed out, made some better passes,” Weston said. “I think that really contributed to the win tonight. Sarah and I have this connection, and we’re really good at knowing where each other are. … It’s really good when we’re both out there and can kick it out to other people, too.”
“When we made a run, we were looking for Savannah,” Chesley said. “When we needed to get grittier and do something with it, we were looking for Savannah. She’s been kind of our go-to the last two games. We have some good 3-point shooters, but that’s a thing where some nights it’s not there.
“Usually when we need to find something, it’s usually Sarah and Savannah, and that inside-out game does something.”
After the two teams combined to put 35 points on the scoreboard in the quarter, the pace changed dramatically in the fourth.
Lawrence scored the first three points of the quarter to pull ahead 46-40 with 4:20 remaining. After shooting 51.5 percent from the floor through the first three periods, Erskine couldn’t find the same rhythm late — connecting on just 3 of 15 attempts over the final eight minutes. Roderick’s bucket with four minutes left to play was the only Eagle field goal over a stretch of 7:01.
“We took a lot of bad shots in the fourth quarter,” Erskine coach Bob Witts said. “They made plays the last four minutes and we didn’t, and that’s what it came down to. That’s just our inexperience.”
With players like Weston, Poli and Curtis on the floor, Lawrence’s veteran know-how in big games showed in crunch time, even after a slow start off a tough five-point loss at Class A North leader Gardiner on Tuesday.
“We’ve gone through this before,” Weston said. “Every game is a big game in this league. We know what we need to execute and how we need to execute it, so it definitely helps with our (experience). But there’s still plenty we need to work on.”
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