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Bill Goodman’s Cheverus girls basketball teams had never lost three games in a row, until a few weeks ago.

The Stags were in need of a shakeup, so Goodman decided it was time to try a new defense.

The strategic tweak paid off Tuesday, as Cheverus, anchored by a dazzling 40-point outing from Kylie Lamson and a switch to man-to-man defense, regained some needed momentum for the homestretch of the season with a 61-51 victory over Sanford.

“We needed that win,” Goodman said after a sigh of relief.

Trying times don’t hit Cheverus (8-3) too often, but they did right at the turn of the new year when the Stags, 22-0 last winter and off to a 6-0 start this season, suddenly sputtered with three straight losses, the last a 62-46 drubbing against Gorham on Jan. 4 in a rematch of last season’s Class AA final.

It was the first time since Goodman was hired in 2019 that the Stags had had such a slump. And for some on the team, it was jarring.

“Yeah, a little bit,” Lamson said. “I didn’t expect to go down three losses.”

Goodman could sense that his players were shaken a bit by the defeats.

“He was helping us get through it,” said sophomore Addie Jordan, who had nine points and nine rebounds Tuesday. “He was like ‘It’s kind of on you guys, you guys have got to bring your confidence back up.’ He was like ‘I’ll help you through the way of bringing confidence back up,’ but it’s on us.”

Confidence was only part of the issue. Goodman could see that the Stags’ zone rotations and movement were sluggish, so after the Gorham game, he had them working on their man defense. It was geared toward making Cheverus faster, quicker, and more disruptive.

“I knew we needed something,” he said. “We’ve been working on shell defense for at least 30, 40 minutes a day, and we just stuck with it, stuck with it.”

Lamson said the Stags went back to the fundamentals.

“(The key was) getting back to basics on defense, learning to get basket line, getting out on our man, hedging,” she said. “And then offensively, it was just getting less turnovers, taking care of the ball, taking good shots.”

Cheverus took the skid as an opportunity for a reset.

“It was just frustration (with) the way we were losing, not moving the ball, not really taking good shots,” Goodman said. “We needed that. I needed that as a coach, to get back to the fundamentals.”

So far, it’s worked, and Cheverus has begun looking again like the team that started the season. After ending the skid with a 60-32 win over Thornton Academy, the Stags made their defensive switch Tuesday and held the Spartans (8-4) to 18 points in the first half while building a lead they didn’t relinquish.

“To get a win like that after what we went through, it’s amazing,” Goodman said. “For our girls to do what we did, I’m so impressed.”

The improved defense helped, but so does having someone like Lamson. The junior guard dropped back to hit shots, attacked with both hands, and overwhelmed Sanford defenders with her quickness. Early in the fourth quarter she hit back-to-back 3s and gave a fist pump as she backpedaled down the court, with Cheverus having extended its lead to 49-34.

“I just let the game come to me,” said Lamson, who scored 24 of her points in the second half and also added 12 rebounds. “I didn’t try to force anything. I let it all come to me.”

She was just as happy about the final score as she was with her totals on the stat sheet.

“The slump, it wasn’t a great feeling,” she said. “But once we came out from the TA game, I think we’ve really got our swagger back now.”

Even in defeat, however, the Spartans gained needed confidence. Ava Hudson’s 21 points and Mollie Puffer’s 15 weren’t enough to give Sanford its seventh straight win, but the Spartans narrowed their 15-point fourth-quarter deficit to six with 1:30 to go, and coach Rossie Kearson said there were positive takeaways from battling back.

“There’s a bunch,” he said. “We’re not going to face too many teams in the league that can score like that. … That doesn’t happen very often. For my girls, I made them understand that if we play with that sort of energy and defensive mentality the rest of the way, we’re probably going to be on the right side of the scoreboard than the other one like we were tonight.”