AUGUSTA — Emily Quirion sat on the Augusta Civic Center court and pumped her right fist. The Cony High senior guard had just drained a transition 3-pointer and was fouled. Her four-point play gave the fourth-seeded Rams their first double-digit lead and Cony was on its way to a 57-35 win over No. 5 Brunswick in an Eastern Class A girls’ basketball quarterfinal Friday.

“I feel like that was the turning point of the game,” said Quirion, who combined slashing drives with four 3-pointers on her way to 27 points.

“I knew right then that we had it, that we’d finally gotten a big enough lead that we could hold it until the end.”

The Dragons (10-9) stayed in contact for most of the game and were only down by three points early in the fourth quarter before the Rams (13-6) went on a 3-point shooting binge.

A 15-0 run was started by a Haley Quirion 3-pointer and was capped by transition 3-pointers from Alyssah Dennett and Emily Quirion, the last giving Cony a 47-29 lead.

“You can sum up the fourth quarter by we didn’t make shots and they did. That sums up pretty much the whole game,” Brunswick Coach Sam Farrell said. “I’ve always believed when you don’t make shots, it makes the other team feel better about taking shots and they tend to make more.”

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The game featured two All-Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference first-team guards: Emily Quirion and Brunswick’s Julia Champagne.

Champagne played the entire game until the final minute but was obviously slowed by a sprained ankle suffered a month ago.

“Rest is the only cure, and it takes two months,” Farrell said.

Champagne scored six points, all in the first half, against a defense focused on stopping her. Dennett was primarily responsible for face-guarding Champagne to limit touches, particularly when the 5-foot-8 junior tried to post up against the Rams.

Anna Dimick worked inside for 13 points, and Lyse Henshaw was able to score 11 for Brunswick.

Meanwhile, Quirion was able to get away from Brunswick’s similar defensive plan. She often used her quickness and ball-handling to drive to the basket, particularly early in the game. After scoring 10 points in the first half she added 17 in the second, shooting 4 of 6 from the floor and 7 of 7 from the line.

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Cony made 8 of 14 attempts beyond the arc, missing just twice after the first quarter.

“They’ve been shooting on these hoops since they were little,” first-year Cony Coach Ted Rioux said.

“They are comfortable here. The big thing with us was that this year we’ve been able to take a team that really, really played uptempo, and we’ve been able to slow them down and make them more efficient.”

Steve Craig can be reached at 791-6413 or:

scraig@pressherald.com

Twitter: SteveCCraig


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