The Class A South girls’ basketball quarterfinals Monday opened with an upset, as No. 6 Greely beat No. 3 Gray-New Gloucester, 52-31, in a surprisingly lopsided victory at the Portland Expo.

“Not a lot of people thought we could win, and I don’t think we all thought we could win,” Greely Coach Todd Flaherty said. “It was house money. Now, we have a day to focus and play (Brunswick)”

The Rangers (9-10) will face No. 2 Brunswick (17-2) in the semifinals at 1 p.m. Wednesday.

Gray-New Gloucester (15-4) won both regular-season matchups with Greely, 53-43 early in the season and 68-26 in late January.

“We might have lost a few games to them, but the tournament is where it starts,” Greely’s Asja Kelman said. “You have to come out 10 times harder, even at the half. Even if they come out hard, go harder.”

Lauren Hester scored 15 points to lead a balanced attack for the Rangers. Kelman added 14.

“That has to happen for us; we don’t have any 20-point scorers, so everybody needs to get five or six,” Flaherty said.

Laney Farrar led Gray-New Gloucester with nine points before fouling out.

“We couldn’t find the basket; whenever we got something easy, it wasn’t easy,” Gray-New Gloucester Coach Mike Andreasen said.

Hester made two 3-pointers to help the Rangers jump out to a 6-2 lead. She hit another 3 as the Rangers started the second quarter with a 9-2 run, then Kelman and Molly Partridge added back-to-back 3-pointers to extend Greely’s lead to 22-8.

“(Hester is) a key aspect of our team. We appreciate her for that,” Kelman said. “She always puts in the effort, no matter what that means.”

A basket by Izzy Morelli and a 3 from Farrar got Gray-New Gloucester within 22-13. Morelli, who finished with eight points, made another bucket and two foul shots, and the Patriots trailed 28-19 going into the halftime break.

“At halftime, down nine, we said, ‘We need to stop them and get a basket,’ but the opposite happened,” Andreasen said. “They scored, we had a stop, and they scored again.”

Gray-New Gloucester tried to stop Greely by implementing a press defense, but the Rangers broke the game open with a 13-2 edge in the third quarter.

The Patriots’ defensive pressure started to work early in the fourth. They forced some turnovers and scored five straight points. Greely soon started to break the press, however, leading to easy layups. Hester and Kelman helped get the Rangers back on track and secure the win with an 8-0 run.

“We had a lot of seniors on the floor; we have been through that before,” Flaherty said. “It has been our strength handling pressure, but we worked on it. It’s more a mental thing than a physical. After they made their little run, we made them pay for it.”

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