Quickness and timely rebounding paid off for Bonny Eagle’s young basketball players, as the Scots captured a key season-opener over South Portland, 62-54, Saturday night.

The Scots fell in their second game, 61-45 at Portland on Tuesday, but their coach is hoping the win at home to start the season will give his players much needed confidence.

“I think our success this year will be predicated on how well we rebound,” said Scots coach Rick Simonds. “And I think we have the potential to be a very good rebounding team.”

Mike O’Donnell, who successfully made the transition from state championship football quarterback to a leader on this basketball squad, sees it the same way. O’Donnell is one of only two seniors (along with Nicholas Mowatt) on a Scots team that will depend heavily on younger players stepping up.

“Whenever we started rebounding, and giving them just one shot, we would go up by 10 or 12 points,” O’Donnell said. “And whenever they started rebounding, they started fast-breaking on us.

“We think we’re more athletic than most teams,” he added.

South Portland is also dealing with the loss of a large class of seniors from last year’s team, and Coach Tony DiBiase thinks that lack of experience showed in the early going.

“We were star struck in the first half, I thought,” DiBiase said. “But in the second half, we had them on the ropes a couple of times. Our big people played better, our point guard played better and we ran the floor better in the second half. I told them after the game I thought this was a gutsy performance. For a group of kids returning only one player from last year’s team, well, we didn’t know what to expect.”

That one returning player for the Red Riots is David Seavey, who ended the night with a team-high 19 points.

O’Donnell, who covered him most of the night, is satisfied with that.

“I tried to get in his face as much as I could,” he said. “You’re not going to stop him completely.”

Simonds was equally happy with his guard’s defense.

“I thought Mike did a wonderful job on him,” Simonds said. “He scored 19, but he earned every one of them.”

James Hanley, meanwhile, gave plenty of headaches to South Portland’s players, with a solid game under the basket. Hanley led Bonny Eagle with 19 points. Scot Proudman also showed his range and finished with 12 points and Michael Harmon and O’Donnell finished with 10 points each.

Bonny Eagle, which goes against Deering Friday (home at 7 p.m.), started quickly and had a 19-9 lead after a quarter. The Scots led 36-22 at halftime, but South Portland pulled back in it in the third quarter, outscoring the home team 18-9, to trail just 45-40 with a quarter left to play.

Nick Wright, who finished with 13 points for the Red Riots, was a big part of that surge, which came while Seavey was sitting out with an injured ankle. He was able to return in the final quarter.

Bonny Eagle finished strong, however, scoring the first nine points of the last period.