AUBURN — Cheverus’ Matt Duchaine posed a big problem for Edward Little in the second quarter of a Class AA North quarterfinal Tuesday night.

The 6-foot-4 junior couldn’t miss, drilling 5 of 6 3-pointers and scoring 15 points in a row for the Stags.

Edward Little Coach Mike Adams had an answer – 6-foot-3 senior Ibn Khalid. The Stags, meanwhile, had no answer for Khalid at the other end.

Khalid scored a game-high 24 points and held Duchaine to two points in the second half to help No. 2 Edward Little pull away from No. 7 Cheverus, 59-47.

Wol Maiwen added 18 points, nine rebounds and six blocked shots for the Red Eddies (15-4) and Darby Shea chipped in with 10 points.

Duchaine led the Stags (6-13) with 17 points, but with Khalid face-guarding him all around the perimeter, he rarely touched the ball and didn’t score again until there were two minutes left in the game.

“(Adams) just told me don’t let him catch the ball and don’t let the screens go through me and stay really close to him,” Khalid said.”I knew he is a catch-and-shoot player first.”

“Khalid did a great job of limiting his catches and taking those shots away,” Adams said. “We did a better job as a team defensively.”

The rest of the Eddies’ defense buckled down, too, and pulled away with a 13-2 third quarter.

Edward Little advances to the semifinals Tuesday at Cross Insurance Arena in Portland. It will face the winner of Wednesday’s quarterfinal between No. 3 Oxford Hills and No. 6 Deering.

Tobias Ephron put Cheverus in front 31-30 to start the second half, but that would be it for the Stags in the third.

“They took Matt out of the game,” Cheverus Coach Ryan Soucie said.

“We really tried to spread the ball, get to the paint and look for (kickouts to the perimeter), and I think they tightened up their ‘D’ and didn’t really allow us to do that.”

A pair of Tyler Morin free throws put the Eddies back in front to stay.

A Khalid hoop, back-to-back 3-pointers by Shea and a 3-pointer just before the buzzer by Khalid made it 43-31 heading into the fourth.

“They were face-guarding Darby, and Darby did a great job of being patient,” Adams said. “We put a little new wrinkle offensively for something like that, and the kids did a good job of getting what we wanted to get for shots.”

“We held (Shea) in check until that third quarter. Then he had a couple of 3s and that really kind of separated them,” Soucie said.

Cheverus got the margin back to single digits three times in the fourth, but never got closer than seven points after an Owen Burke 3-pointer with 1:32 left.

The Stags had a chance to get closer after Morin missed a pair of free throws, but couldn’t secure the rebound. On the subsequent possession, Austin Brown fed a cutting Khalid for a three-point play that put the Stags away with 1:11 to go.

Edward Little, which had beaten Cheverus 64-54 in Auburn on Dec. 15, used its size and athleticism to attack the paint. The Eddies fed the 6-foot-4 Maiwen early and often for eight first-quarter points and a 13-9 lead after one.

“Coach always says ‘Paint wins,’ so that’s what we tried to establish early,” Maiwen said.

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