ERIE, Pa. – Maine Red Claws point guard Kenny Hayes didn’t pull any punches after Thursday night’s 105-87 loss to the Erie BayHawks before 4,526 fans at Tullio Arena.

“We just can’t get punked like that,” Hayes said. “They just straight punked us in the second half. If we want to get better and have our goal be to compete for a championship, then we can’t allow that.”

The Red Claws blew a 13-point first-quarter lead and fell to 0-2. Hayes scored a team-high 20 points, but the Red Claws got just 14 points in the fourth quarter.

Maine will play its home opener Saturday against Springfield. The Armor beat the Red Claws in the season opener last week, 94-87.

“Like Coach said, this is a man’s game,” Hayes said. “If you’re not going to step up to the plate and be a man, you don’t belong here. We’ve got to forget about this game.”

Mychel Thompson had 24 points and Donald Sloan and Chris Daniels each added 19 points in sparking Erie (1-2) to its first win of the season.

The BayHawks fell behind 19-6 in the first quarter and trailed 27-18 at the end of the first. Erie committed six turnovers in the quarter.

“We came out sluggish,” Thompson said. “We were tense or something. I’m not even sure, but we can’t do that and put ourselves in a hole.”

As promising as that early lead looked for Maine, Red Claws Coach Dave Leitao saw something else — and it wasn’t good.

“We left some points on the floor,” said Leitao, whose team was 1 of 8 from 3-point range. “We could have been up a lot more, but we left the door open.”

Leitao said he knew Erie would make a run, but the Red Claws got empty trips because of unforced turnovers. They finished with 21 turnovers.

“When you do that, it obviously doesn’t give you a chance to score, but more importantly, it sets a mind-set to the other team that they don’t have to work to get the ball back,” he said. “They eventually took advantage of that.”

Erie bounced back with an 18-6 run at the start of the second quarter to build a 36-33 lead. Thompson’s third 3-pointer prompted Leitao to call a timeout.

Up 53-46 at the half, the BayHawks opened the second half with a 7-0 spurt. Sloan scored four points and Daniels, a 7-footer, added a 3-pointer.

“They just punched us right in the mouth and we didn’t respond,” Hayes said.

Maine closed to within 80-75 early in the fourth, but Erie answered with a 9-2 run to regain a double-digit lead. The Red Claws never got within single digits after that.

“I don’t think there was a time in that second half after that (7-0) run that we gave ourselves a stretch were we could climb back,” Leitao said.

 

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