Thursday’s practice was a poor one, so Cheverus girls’ basketball coach Bill Goodman told his team to go to sleep, rest up and bring the energy against Bangor on Friday.

It took a half, but the Stags got the message.

Ruth Boles scored 19 points, grabbed 11 rebounds and sparked a second-half surge, Maddie Fitzpatrick and Megan Dearborn added 11 points apiece, and Cheverus remained undefeated with a 54-34 victory over Bangor in a matchup of the top two teams in the Class AA North Heal point standings.

Cheverus has one more game remaining, against Portland, before the Class AA North tournament, but the Stags (17-0) got a good test from the Rams (11-5).

“This was a playoff game tonight,” Goodman said. “We knew it was going to be a battle. We kind of played the first half like we practiced last night. And then, in the second half, we woke up.”

Cheverus jumped out to an 11-2 lead, but Bangor’s tough interior defense, led by Mimi Quinn (seven points, nine rebounds), closed off paths to the basket for Fitzpatrick and helped send the game to halftime with Cheverus up only 19-18.

The Stags needed a player to rise up, and Boles took over. The senior scored seven straight points on two putbacks and a three-point play, and also grabbed six rebounds in the first 3:22 of the second half to help Cheverus open a 28-18 lead.

“We just needed to step up and match them,” Boles said. “(I knew) my intensity needed to be up, and I just wanted to help my team create that.”

She didn’t, however, expect to become the focal point.

“I definitely didn’t think it was going to be me,” she said. “Maddie pulled us together at the beginning of the half and said ‘We need to calm down, focus, just pass the ball.’ That just clicked, and I just played.”

Delaney Horr made a 3 to trim Bangor’s deficit to seven, but Fitzpatrick made one of her own on the next possession. Cheverus never led by fewer than nine points the rest of the way.

“Ruth’s been playing great all season, and tonight she really stepped up big,” Fitzpatrick said. “She’s just a great rebounder. I think she’s the best rebounder in the state. She can just get in there, maneuver through defenders. … Tonight was her night.”

Bangor, led by 11 points from Emily Adams, found some success against a full-court trapping defense in the second quarter, but the Rams had trouble with the pressure later as the deficit grew.

“I thought defensively, we played really well in the first half. We did in the second half, also, but … we played six kids, fatigue got us a little bit,” said Bangor Coach Jay Kemble, whose team started three sophomores. “They’re a quality team. They’ve got just a lot of good kids that can do different things for them and do them well.”

Cheverus’s edge in experience was on display with seniors Boles, Fitzpatrick and Dearborn, who hit a 3-pointer late in the second quarter after Bangor took its only lead, 16-15.

“We had to treat it like a playoff game,” Fitzpatrick said. “We’re almost at that time where we have to start switching our mindset to if we lose, we’re done. This is the time where we transition our thinking.”

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