POLAND — Michael Susi said that Friday’s clash with rival Gray-New Gloucester was a “yard-stick game” for his Poland team. The Knights’ coach called the Patriots “the best team right now in Class B South.”

They played like it. Gray-New Gloucester scored 24 points in the second half, pulling away for a 46-28 victory in a battle of unbeaten  WMC girls’ basketball teams.

Despite the Patriots (6-0) nearly reaching the half-century mark on the scoreboard, Friday’s matchup was all about defense. The Knights came out in an aggressive zone defense and that stalled the Patriots’ offense on its first possession. Gray-NG coach Mike Andreasen called a timeout 1:34 into the game, with the initial possession still going and his team down 2-0.

“I thought we looked almost dysfunctional tonight in the zone offense, and we’re going to see more of it, because man-to-man we’re a tough matchup, because we’ve got five kids who, against a man, can score the basketball,” Andreasen said. “Against a zone, if we’re going to shoot that way, we’re going to see a lot more to come.”

Out of the timeout came a Poland steal, but the Patriots stole the ball right back for a Skye Conley pull-up jumper.

“We’re at our best when we are defending, but we’re not fouling,” Susi said. “We’re playing hard, we’re playing smart.”

The problem for the Knights is that smart plays weren’t always there, and the fouls were. Offensive spark plug Nathalie Theriault picked up her second foul before the game was even three minutes old, and she ended up being stuck on four points scored until the fourth quarter.

That was compounded with fellow starter Sarah Moody going down with an ankle injury around the same time. Moody came back for a brief moment in the first, but then left the game again until the fourth quarter.

“We had foul trouble, and then at that point we’re just like a lot of teams in our league where we don’t have a ton of depth,” Susi said. “We just didn’t seem to have any spark coming off the bench when we needed it.”

The Patriots took their first lead late in the first quarter on a pair of free throws by Conley, who then made a put-back shot with 1.5 seconds left in the first for an 11-8 lead.

That score stood until 2:35 into the second quarter, when Jessica Seeley made a transition layup to cut the deficit to one. But the Patriots scored 11 of the final 13 points in the quarter to take a 10-point lead into the half.

The Knights started the second half on a 5-0 run to thanks to a Seeley 2-pointer and a Morgan Brosseau 3-pointer, but the Patriots put a stop to the run soon after.

“We got on that 5-0 run, timeout, wake up, they woke up and they came right back at us on their own little quick run,” Susi said.

It was the defense that did the stopping for Gray-NG.

“When they got the thing to 22-17, we put kind of the defensive clamps on them again and we were able to get just enough offense to kind of make the (score) go back up again,” Andreasen said.

The points didn’t come for the Patriots until 3:15 left in the third, when Bri Jordan hit a pull-up jumper in transition. Conley provided four more points as the visitors ended the period on a 6-0 run.

Poland opened the scoring again in the fourth, but the Patriots pulled away down the stretch with an 18-point quarter.

“We came right out and got on quick runs every quarter, and that’s what you love as a coach,” Susi said. “But foul trouble killed us throughout the game, didn’t allow us to play the people that give us that good offensive flow.”

Theriault finally got going on offense in the fourth, but played the whole quarter with four fouls. She poured in six points in the period to finish with a team-high 10 points.

Jordan helped stifle her, forcing many of Theriault’s fouls, including two on block attempts. Jordan made only one of the four free throws she took off those fouls, and was just 2-of-7 for the game, but she was still the game’s top scorer, with 19 points.

“I think she was our most consistent shooter tonight,” Andreasen said. “Even when Bri’s not knocking down her shots, she’s working hard on defense. She draws the other team’s best player. She drew Nathalie tonight.’

Conley added 16 points, including going 8-for-8 on foul shots, but Andreasen said he wished his team would have found her more inside when facing the zone defense.

“We’ve got to get touches in the post,” Andreasen said. “That’s where it really needs to start with, and then we can work the ball inside-out, and then the kids can knock down jump shots.

“The good news for us I think is we make them scoring 28 points look tough.”

wkramlich@sunjournal.com