YARMOUTH — After Saturday night’s 69-55 win against Greely, the Falmouth boys’ basketball team faced another challenge Tuesday.

But the Yachtsmen got their act together in the fourth quarter to turn back the Clippers for a 55-48 victory in a Western Maine Conference game.

“When we get challenges, we’ve got to face them and persevere,” Falmouth center Jack Simonds said.

And that’s what Falmouth did. It finished the game with an 18-10 run, sinking 5 of 6 throws in the final 24 seconds.

“It’s a great experience for us,” said Falmouth forward Justin Rogers said.

“It’s always good in the middle of the season to get pressure, to get challenged, because it helps us later on down the road.”

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It was a far different game than when the teams met Dec. 10 at Falmouth.

In that game, sophomore guard Thomas Coyne scored a career-high 37 points as Falmouth ran away with an 84-65 win.

“Early in the year we really don’t know what to expect,” Yarmouth Coach Adam Smith said. “We played with them for a half and we were pretty happy with that, and it showed in the second half.”

This time the Clippers rallied from an early 25-15 deficit to make it 37-37 by the end of the third quarter.

“Tonight we just played with a little bit better focus for four quarters,” Smith said.

“We were able to stay in the game, make a run and give ourselves an opportunity in that fourth quarter.”

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The Clippers (7-3) took their only lead when David Murphy sank 1 of 2 free throws in the opening moments of the fourth quarter.

“Coach got on us at halftime and he got on us again during a timeout in the third quarter and we started to run our stuff,” Rogers said.

“We started to attack their zone. We were little too passive. Once we attacked their zone, we found openings underneath.”

The game came four days after the Yachtsmen’s big win over Greely, the top-ranked team in Western Class B.

“I think we got full of ourselves after the Greely win and maybe we needed to be a little more focused,” Falmouth Coach David Halligan said.

“You can’t take anything away from Yarmouth because they worked hard.

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Yarmouth is always better at the end of the season. Adam does a good job of preparing them and getting better.”

Nick Burton, a 6-foot-5 senior forward, led Falmouth (10-1) with 16 points. Coyne followed with 15 points, all on 3-pointers.

Nate Shields-Auble, a senior center, led Yarmouth with 13 points. Musseit M’Bareck, a sophomore point guard, followed with 12 points. Murphy scored all eight of his points in the second half.

“The better team tonight made the last run,” Smith said. “We came out on the losing end but we feel good about our four-quarter effort tonight.”


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