CUMBERLAND — For three quarters, Kennebunk and Greely battled closely in a Western Maine Class B boys lacrosse game. Then in the fourth it was all Greely, as the Rangers outscored the Rams 5-0 to win the game 13-9 at Hutchins Field Tuesday.

Greely (4-2) led 2-1 after the first quarter and 6-5 at halftime, with Kennebunk (3-3) holding early leads in both periods before the Rangers rallied.

The Rams looked ready to take control in the third quarter after an intense halftime discussion, as they scored four of the first five goals of the quarter to go ahead 9-7 halfway through the period. But Tim Adams scored for Greely with 3:35 left in the quarter to cut the deficit to one heading into the fourth.

“Just patience,” Greely head coach Mike Storey said of what allowed his team to stay in the game during Kennebunk’s third-quarter run. “We concentrate on it’s one thing at a time. So it’s one defensive stand, one goal, concentrate on one thing at a time and kind of ride out the momentum of the other team, and push back when our opportunity comes.”

Rain started to fall right around the time of Adams’ goal, and it didn’t let up until the late in the fourth. As the rain poured on the field, so did the Rangers on the Kennebunk defense. Dillon Trelegan and Gabe Belisle scored within the first four minutes to put Greely ahead, then Adams, Mitchel Mullin and Alex Wetmore finished off the Rams in a flurry.

“We just weren’t sliding correctly. We weren’t in the right place. We were never in the right place today, at all,” said Kennebunk head coach Dan Seavey. “We didn’t really have any good defensive stands at all.”

Kennebunk made a habit of getting off to good starts in the first three quarters. Patrick Gassman scored the game’s opening goal just 42 seconds in, then the Rams hit two posts and missed on shots in the last 10 seconds of the quarter as they went scoreless for the rest of the period.

It took more than two minutes for Kennebunk to get on the board in the second quarter, but the Rams scored three goals in a 1:29 span ”“ from Patric Murphy, Jake Boothby and Donovan Connor ”“ to storm ahead 4-2.

Storey called a timeout after Connor’s goal and the Rangers responded, scoring four of the final five goals of the quarter to go up by one at halftime.

“It’s just we’re up and down. We’ll get runs, we’ll score three goals, then we’ll just take a quarter off,” said Seavey. “It’s frustrating.”

Seavey and his coaching staff were animated with the Kennebunk players at halftime, as they tried to light a spark. It worked right off the bat in the third quarter, as Bo Beveridge fed Boothby for a goal 52 seconds in. Murphy scored 23 seconds later as the Rams retook the lead.

Adams tied the game up 3:43 in, but Beveridge fed Boothby again 36 seconds after that. Tyler Dumas then scored just over a minute later as the Rams looked to have righted their ship. But that was the last goal the Rams scored in the game.

“When we run our offensive set, we score a lot of goals,” said Seavey. “We had a good two-man game going and just went away from it, then couldn’t score, couldn’t produce any goals.”

Storey called Tuesday’s clash a “pivotal” game for his team, as the Rangers were facing off with a Western Maine Conference rival that is a perennial postseason competitor. Storey was looking for his team to finish a game against such a foe.

“We’ve been really working hard on putting a complete game together. We’ve had a couple big games so far that our second half didn’t go very well and we didn’t complete the game,” said Storey. “So we were really concentrating on putting a full four quarters together, and the guys put it together today.”

Seavey, meanwhile, is still looking for his team to reach its full potential. The flashes the Rams showed during a hot-and-cold performance only frustrated him more, knowing his team had a better game in it.

“We just got to get everyone on board, get everyone on the same page. We’ve been working on that for the last four weeks,” said Seavey. “It’s been a struggle.”

Kennebunk is back in action Saturday, as the Rams face Cheverus on the road.

— Sports Staff Writer Wil Kramlich can be contacted at 282-1535, ext. 323 or [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @WilTalkSports.