BATH

It wasn’t evident on the scoreboard, but Tuesday’s Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference boys lacrosse game between rivals Brunswick and Morse was useful for both sides.

For the Shipbuilders, the 24-3 defeat served as a learning experience — after graduating several seniors from last season, coach Jay Paulus said a game like Tuesday’s can only help a young group determine what it needs to work on.

For the visitors and coach Don Glover, the blowout win served as a mental test and allowed him to experiment with different formations and players in certain roles — all the while keeping his team sharp and unfocused on the score.

Brunswick (5-0) shot out of the gates promptly, with junior captain Christian Glover scoring a long-stick goal just 22 seconds into the opening quarter. Jameson Cyr, who assisted the first goal, found Josh Dorr for a second goal less than two minutes later. Over the next six minutes, Brunswick’s lead grew to 4-0.

For Morse (0-4) it was an early hole to dig out of, but for Glover, the hole wasn’t deep enough.

“I think we started off just kind of in a lull,” he said. “We preach all the time, ‘don’t focus on the scoreboard.’ We’re more interested in how we’re playing. Are we doing the little things that we preach all the time and are we playing mentally smart — just basically taking care of details.”

“We started off a little slow,” said freshman attacker Aiden Glover, who netted all four of his goals in the first half and tacked on an assist. “Our defense and offense was a little sloppy, but then we picked it up. Coach helped motivate us and we did a little better towards the end of the first quarter and then throughout the rest of the game.”

The Dragons took a 7-0 lead into the second quarter, but Don Glover wanted to see more.

“Simple, just flush the first quarter,” he said of the transition. “The quarter’s over. Put it away and just get back to the basics. There’s no master formula here — we came up with this super formula to win games in the sport of lacrosse. It’s just go back to the basics and do the little things right.”

The message worked, as the visitors exploded for 11 goals on 15 shots in the second frame. Aiden Glover sandwiched his fourth score of the night between two goals from Max Burtis, and Christian Glover unleashed another long-stick rip from distance. By halftime, the Dragons were leading 30-10 on shots, and led by 15.

“Any team that sees us after the first quarter, they recognize what we have,” Paulus said. “They pretty much exploit on the defensive end. There was moments when they played well, but not consistently. There was times where the ball moved fast, we got a couple of those goals, that’s what I want to see all four periods.”

On the board

Morse’s first goal came from Cameron Marco at the 4:56 mark in the second quarter when he took a Matt Belanger pass from behind the net and snuck it past goalie Logan Ouellette to cut the deficit to 12-1. Marco scored again just over two minutes later, part of solid spell of play heading into halftime.

“What I take from this is the fact that the guys didn’t give up,” Paulus said. “We’ve got to improve on the groundball and the possession game. The teams we play, we have to maintain the ball, we have to manage the ball. We can’t make all those unforced errors. Lots of things to learn from this one.”

Belanger and Pat McKenna each tallied three groundballs for the hosts, but they ultimately lost the possession battle to Brunswick, which won the face-off duel, 19-10. Marco assisted Declan Hall on a long-distance goal with just 29.9 seconds left in the first half, only to see Max Grammis and the Dragons answer right back 17 seconds later.

Paulus noted that part of what makes Brunswick so difficult to play against is the sheer number of players on its side — Don Glover is constantly rotating groups of players in and out of the game. Paulus, on the other hand, plays one line of midfielders and fields his entire junior varsity squad on the varsity roster.

“It’s tough,” Paulus said. “Next year I’ve got 12 guys coming up — we’ve got numbers that are starting to show up. We’re trying to build that up.”

“You do the little things that you wouldn’t do in a really tight game,” Don Glover said. “You try some different schemes of things, different personnel in places. Not deviating from the idea of playing good, basic lacrosse — it’s not like swap sticks and anybody can do anything they want — it’s just more put some personnel in different positions to test them and see how well they handle it.”

Paulus, whose Shipbuilders host Cony on Thursday at 5 p.m., said he was pleased with the effort from his side. In a rebuilding year, there’s only one direction to go.

“Keep your heads up,” Paulus said of a message to tell his players, “We just got to work game by game. I just want them to improve, each one to improve. I’m trying to avoid the humiliation, the heads down, and they’re not giving me that, so I’m hopeful.”