There were times that neither team played well enough to win, but throughout the game it was apparent that neither team wanted to lose. Such was the case last Saturday evening in Scarborough when the Red Storm rallied for a 54-50 overtime win against Windham.

Scarborough opened the game with solid play at both ends of the floor to take a quick 5-0 lead thanks to baskets from Abby Pelletier and Sarah Bonenfant. The Red Storm had several opportunities to increase that advantage, but they missed some scoring chances and turned the ball over.

Windham responded with three straight hoops (from Kelly Dubay, Stacey Niedoroda, and Riley Graves) to pull ahead by one and the game see-sawed back and forth until the Storm took a 13-12 lead into the second period.

Everyone on the floor was contributing with Scarborough baskets coming from Jenn Colpitts, Heather Carrier, Melissa Bell and Christy Manning while Windham had buckets from Kelsey McGowan and Kelsey Babb.

A 3-pointer by Bonenfant with 1:10 left in the second quarter was the final bucket of the first half, and the Red Storm went to the break with a 23-18 advantage.

If Scarborough had the momentum to close out the first half, Windham stole that immediately stole that momentum at the start of the third quarter. The Eagles opened the second half with 10 unanswered points to pull ahead 28-23. Steals by Jenna Willey and Helen Libby turned into easy layups. Hard work under the boards produced a pair of foul shots by Graves and two more baskets from Libby and McGowan forced the Storm to call a timeout and re-group.

“I’m very disappointed with our defensive effort tonight,” Scarborough coach Jim Seavey said after the game. “That’s something we pride ourselves on and for whatever reason we were flat-footed and gave up a lot of transition baskets that we’re usually very good at taking away. We weren’t rotating defensively and there was no communication on the floor.”

Scarborough stopped the bleeding with a 3-point play from Pelletier and they added baskets from Reegan Brackett and Bonenfant to close out the quarter trailing by a single point at 33-32.

“It was one of those situations where we played not to lose rather than playing to win tonight,” said Seavey. “Maybe we got caught looking past them (Windham) to next week because we have two big games with Gorham and Deering.”

Neither team had more than a four-point lead the rest of the way. A basket by Graves was matched by free throws from Brackett and Carrier. A drive by Libby was met with a score from Pelletier. And so it went until Windham grabbed a 46-42 lead with less than two minutes to play after a pair of free throws by Libby and another score by Graves.

Pelletier scored on a putback to get the Storm within 46-44. A Windham free throw was followed by a Brackett free throw and the score stood at 47-45. Scarborough fouled and the Eagles missed both free throws giving the Storm one last chance to tie the score.

An inbounds play to Manning under the basket looked like the answer. Manning first shot was partially blocked and she was fouled on her second attempt with 1.7 seconds left on the clock. She calmly made both shots from the charity stripe to send the game into overtime ay 47-47.

Manning made two more free throws to start the extra session and she added a key steal (as did Carrier and Bonenfant) to hold off the Eagles for the 54-50 win.

“I told the kids ‘good teams find a way to win’ and tonight we were fortunate enough to be able to do that. Hopefully we’ll come of age because of this (overtime win) and grow from it,” said Seavey.

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