POLAND — You could call Falmouth an annual measuring-stick game for Poland boys’ soccer.

Stopwatch game might be more fitting, however. As in how long can the Class B Knights hang with the Class A Yachtsmen before depth and reality set in?

The answer Thursday was 31 minutes. Poland’s defense kept matching zeroes on the scoreboard for that impressive block of the evening. Then Luke Velas tipped the ball to Gabe Mahoney for the goal that opened the floodgates to a 7-0 Falmouth victory.

Velas, a senior, also scored with 15 seconds remaining in the half. He finished with three goals and two assists.

“The killer goal was the end of the first half,” Falmouth coach Dave Halligan said. “Then once we regrouped we were fine.”

Led by Derek Michaud, Cody Kostro and goalie Zach Lowe, Poland (3-3-2) warded off frequent Falmouth opportunities and even had a chance to swipe a 1-0 lead.

Michaud’s brilliant solo effort down the right side led to a centering pass that caught Falmouth goalkeeper Jesse Melchiskey leaning. Ben Campbell’s blast veered just wide of the open left post.

It was Poland’s third and final shot of the game. Mahoney put Falmouth (5-0-2) on the board under a minute later.

“We’re always glad to put in the effort and see how difficult we can make it,” Poland coach Kris Wright said. “I thought we had a couple of chances in the first half to put one in. We’ve played Falmouth before and haven’t even gotten a shot. Little steps, I guess.”

The Knights had a chance to escape the half with the one-goal deficit, but an attempt to clear the defensive zone deflected off a Falmouth defender and fell — conveniently, for the Yachtsmen — at the feet of Velas.

He rattled it in off the post.

“We had a bit of an error there, to play a ball too quickly that we could have waited on a bit and gotten a better service. Instead it hits a defender, it bounces back, he picks it up and it’s off to the races,” Wright said. “He did a nice job to finish that, and instead of being down one at the half, we’re down two. They certainly had a bit of psychological momentum going in their favor.”

Falmouth stacked up another pair of goals in an 83-second span early in the second half.

Ben Wuesthoff polished off the first, courtesy of Matt Polewaczyk.

The Yachtsmen made it 4-0 when Velas, Jake Grade and Jonah Speigel etched a triangle with their perfectly timed passing sequence off an indirect kick. Spiegel headed in Grade’s feed from right to left.

“We were a little lackadaisical in the first half. Poland was playing well. They were smart and aggressive. They were doing what they needed to do,” Halligan said. “What we wanted to do in the first half, we came out and executed better in the second half.”

Velas then cemented the hat trick, first with an unassisted tally, then with another by way of Caleb Lydick.

“We had no answer for him tonight,” Wright said of Velas. “I had a suspicion of what Coach Halligan was doing in the first half when he took that (starting) group out and put another group, that he was simply playing the numbers game and would wear us down.”

Greyson Cohen capped the scoring.

Lowe finished with 19 saves against 37 Falmouth shots. Wright lauded the play of Michaud in the midfield, saying “there was no bigger heart” on the field.

“We’ve come a long way, and we’ve got a long way to go still. We are overmatched a little bit by a team that is quite so deep. Even their first-string JV team right there at the end gave us everything we could hope to hang in there against,” Wright added. “They understand the game. They understand the choreography. They’re very well coached, and they’re a fine-tuned machine.”