After two losses to start the season, the Windham girls basketball team needed a pick-me-up. As the final horn sounded on Saturday afternoon’s game against Scarborough, it got one.

Riley Graves laid in an offensive rebound from the right side of the rim as time expired to lift the Eagles (1-2) to a 36-34 win over the Red Storm (2-1) at Windham High School in one of the first big upsets of the season in the SMAA. The game was moved from its original slot on Friday because of the effects of the recent ice storm.

“We came out sluggish, came out flat, whatever you want to call it,” said Scarborough coach Jim Seavey. “I don’t want to say we looked beyond them, but sometimes kids read the papers, look at records and mentally that gets into their heads. You’ve got to come out and play. You can be as good as you want to be on paper, but you’ve got to play the game between the lines.”

Graves finished with a game-high 12 points as the Eagles, who trailed by eight early in the third, rallied for a come-from-behind win. Scarborough fell behind 10-5 after the first quarter and 16-8 midway through the second, but went on a 12-0 run to close the half and scored the first four points of the third quarter to take a 24-16 lead. Reegan Brackett and Sarah Moody scored eight points apiece for the Red Storm.

Windham coach Jessie Mayol said the win should give her team a boost, as it has struggled in losses to Gorham and Deering.

“Scarborough is definitely one of the top teams this year,” Mayol said. “They’re ranked up there as a team to watch. We hadn’t played well yet this year.”

In a game that saw both teams struggle to make shots, Mayol credits her defense with getting the Eagles the victory.

“It was definitely our defense that got us this win,” she said. “We threw a couple of different things at them. All year, that’s what our focus is going to be – our defense.”

Windham used a newly installed 3-2 zone early in the game, which limited Scarborough’s inside scoring opportunities. The outside shots weren’t falling for the Red Storm either, as a 3-pointer by Windham’s Stephanie Frost and five points from Graves and four off the bench from Kelly Dubay helped the Eagles stake an early lead.

But the Red Storm, well, stormed back after falling behind by eight in the second quarter. Moody scored six points and Heather Carrier added four in the quarter. Carrier’s putback tied it at 16-16 with 1:30 to go in the half. Her jumper from straightaway 40 seconds later gave the Red Storm its first lead, which it extended to 20-16 on a pair of free throws by Moody with 20 seconds to go before halftime.

Scarborough got a basket from Moody and two free throws from Christy Manning to start the third quarter, completing a 16-point run and giving it a 24-16 lead. But the Red Storm did not score again in the quarter as the Eagles upped the intensity on the defensive end.

“Our man-to-man defense has been working very well all season and I wanted to switch it up a little bit,” Mayol said. “Sometimes when we fall back in a zone, our intensity falls back, too. We just wanted to pick up our intensity in the second half with full-court man-to-man.”

Windham point guard Meghan Gribbin made a runner with 5:47 to play in the third, making it 24-18. Nearly four scoreless minutes went by before Graves sank two free throws. Kelsey McGowan’s layup with 1:05 to go in the third made it 24-22 entering the fourth quarter.

Graves tied it at 24-24 on a putback 30 seconds into the fourth. Scarborough reassumed the lead at 28-25 on Brackett’s free throw, but Gribbin knocked down a 3 with 3:30 left to re-knot the score. It was again tied at 32-32 when Gribbin came off a screen to bury a jumper, making it 34-32 with 1:17 left. Manning answered with a basket inside just 10 seconds later. Windham called timeout with under a minute left after getting the ball over midcourt.

The Eagles worked the ball around the perimeter for 30 seconds before calling timeout again with 18 seconds to go. Frost put up a 3 with five seconds left, rebounded her own miss and put up another shot, which Graves rebounded and put in for the winning basket.

“With 18 seconds left, we knew we wanted to hold the ball until the last shot,” Mayol said. “They were in a zone. We were working it around. To have Stephanie Frost, as a freshman, step up with five seconds left, shoot a 3-pointer, miss it, follow it and get the tip to Riley – that’s just huge that a freshman would step up and do that.”

The freshman backcourt tandem of Frost and Gribbin both came up big down the stretch. They combined for 12 points, seven coming in the fourth quarter. Gribbin said the pressure never factored in. “I just went with the flow,” she said. She thinks the win is something the Eagles can build on. “It’s huge,” she said. “We had two close losses against Gorham and Deering. It’s just going to make us more confident.”

While Windham got a much-needed win and some confidence, Seavey thinks the early loss could end up helping his Scarborough squad.

“The good thing is it’s game 3 of the year, not game 18 going into the tournament,” Seavey said. “We have 15 games left and this might be a little reality check that will just make us work that much harder in practice.”

Scarborough played without senior forward Abbey Pelletier, a three-year starter, who missed the game because of illness.

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