There was no letdown this time. The Falmouth boys basketball team made sure of it.

Billy Birks scored 19 points, Ezra Hamlin added 14, and the second-seeded Navigators beat defending state champion and No. 7 seed Gray-New Gloucester, 62-45, in a Class A South quarterfinal Saturday at the Portland Expo.

One year after Falmouth lost in the quarterfinals as a No. 2 seed to Westbrook, the Navigators ensured history didn’t repeat itself, taking the lead midway through the first quarter and never letting it go.

“I’ve been trying to forget about that ever since it happened, but it is a pretty hard thing to forget about,” Birks said. “We didn’t want it to happen again. We came out, we were prepared, we played how we wanted to play.”

How’d they do it?

• Depth paid off. With Davis Mann (21.8 points per game in the regular season) hampered by foul trouble and held scoreless in the first half, the rest of the Navigators stepped up. In addition to Birks and Hamlin, Declan O’Brien contributed nine points.

“What we say is no one of us is as good as all of us,” Falmouth coach Dave Halligan said. “We all play together, and as long as we share the ball and don’t care who scores, we’ll be fine.”

• Birks caught fire early. With the Patriots up 5-4, the all-SMAA first-team selection buried three straight 3-pointers, the last a shot from the right wing that made it 13-5 and prompted a triumphant yell. Falmouth never trailed again.

“When my confidence is up, it’s great for me, because I can just get open shots for other people,” he said.

• After taking a 15-9 lead into the second quarter, Falmouth crushed the Patriots’ comeback chances. The Navigators shot 7 for 13 (54%) from the field in the second while Gray-New Gloucester was 2 for 12 (17%), and the lead grew to 32-15.

Rally attempt

• Gray-New Gloucester went on a 12-3 run to cut its deficit to 42-34 on a John Patenaude 3-pointer with 6:42 to play before the Navigators pulled away again.

“We felt like we had a chance,” Gray-New Gloucester coach Ian McCarthy said. “We just needed a stop and a score, and I think they might have been feeling a little different on the other end.”

Stat leaders

• Gray-New Gloucester: Colby Mitchell (17 points, eight rebounds), John Patenaude (14 points)

• Falmouth: Billy Birks (19 points), Ezra Hamlin (14 points, 13 rebounds), Declan O’Brien (nine points, nine rebounds)

They said it

• “The first game is always the toughest. Kids come in here with a lot of doubt, the atmosphere, we try to tell them about it, but you’ve got to experience it. Now they have a little more confidence, they know they can be successful here.” — Dave Halligan

• “Ezra’s our best rebounder out there. And when he gets the ball in the post and gets up in the air, there’s nothing anyone can do about it. It’s cash every time.” — Billy Birks

• “We’ve been playing together since we were about 2 feet tall. I knew that I needed to be there for them and play my role.” — Ezra Hamlin