A strong team effort – no one Riot’s contributions stuck out, though Ansel Stilley posted the squad’s best tally on the night, with 11 – kept South Portland abreast of visiting Deering on Friday night, Jan. 8.

Until the fourth quarter dawned, anyway. In the home stretch, the Rams blew the bout wide open, outscoring the Riots by 17 to claim an important W. 66-46 in the end.

“We forced them to play our style, our pace – because they’re difficult to play up and down with, and they’re quick,” said South Portland head coach Kevin Millington. “For three quarters we did that, and made them really have to earn their baskets.”

“In a lot of ways, it’s two pretty even teams,” Millington said. “They’re a little quicker than us out front, we’re maybe a little quicker than them inside.”

The Rams leapt to a quick 12-4 lead, early in the first quarter. Stilley (three twos), Ruay Bol (two twos) and Nate Pelletier (one two) kept the Riots afloat as best they could, but the team still finished the opening eight minutes down 18-12.

South Portland sheared the Rams in the second, though, outscoring them 12-8 to a mere two-point deficit, 26-24, at the break. Stilley went silent through those eight minutes, but Bol added a two; Riley Hasson and Deandre did the Riots’ heavy lifting, each draining a two and a pretty three.

“We were down because we turned the ball over – like, a lot,” said Millington. “We fought back because we got some stops. We didn’t all of a sudden get hot in the second quarter; we got some stops, and got chances to score easy baskets.”

The third rolled back and forth, but South Portland could never get a leg up on Deering, only keep pace with them. Riot Jack Fiorini hashed his first points of the match with a gargantuan (and crowd-pleasing) runaway dunk midway through the quarter, but the team then slipped into another series of turnovers. Luckily, they maintained their poise on defense, and when Moses Oreste basketed a two to segue into the fourth, the Riots trailed by only three, 42-39.

“Deering makes it hard to run your offense,” Millington said, “because they’re pressing you. You get the ball up over half-court, you find yourself in a three-on-two, so you end up taking a quick shot. If you miss that shot, they rebound it, and you find yourself on defense again.”

The Rams exploded in the closing eight minutes, plucking points – 24, to be exact – from the rim like so many apples from a tree. South Portland managed a meager seven, falling in somewhat deceptive fashion; mostly, they’d played better ball than the final score indicated.

“Just the way the game sometimes goes,” Millington said, “we go down, we miss, we turn it over, they go down, they score; it goes from four or five (down) to seven, then they hit a three, it’s 10, now we’re pressing a little, trying to dig back in because it’s the fourth quarter. That pressing, we give up offensive rebounds because we’re trying to get up the court. We’re turning the ball over because we’re trying too hard. We’re taking a quicker shot than we’re accustomed to making. That just compiled the score.”

Millington offered a nicely nuanced observation about his boys’ late-game mindset.

“It’s strong to say they lost their composure. They’re just very competitive and they were trying to come back. And we haven’t been in enough of those situations – ‘composure’ is a good word in that sense – where you can regroup and make sure you execute and run your offense.”

Beyond Stilley’s 11, Bol added nine, Fiorini seven, Oreste six, Hasson and White five apiece, and Pelletier and DePaolo a deuce each. Ben Williams logged Deering’s biggest night, finishing with 16.

The loss dropped South Portland to 7-3 in 2015-16. The Riots hosted Scarborough on Tuesday the 12th. They welcome Thornton on Saturday the 16th.

The W maintained Deering’s untarnished record at 9-0. The Rams traveled to TA on Tuesday; they welcome cross-town rivals Portland on Thursday and another top-tier opponent, Massabesic, on Saturday.

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South Portlander Ansel Stilley – who hashed the Riots’ tallest tally on the night, with 11 – plays keepaway with a Deering defender; Sam DePaolo circles around around to get open for a pass.Chasing points, South Portlander Ruay Bol drives into, up and over Deering defender James Sinclair.