HERMON – Orono’s Sarah Marquez may have looked human Friday night against the Hermon girls basketball team, but she showed enough flashes of her scoring prowess late in the game to help the Red Riots overcome an early deficit against the Hawks.

Injury-depleted Hermon, which has played much of the season without two senior starters, held its own for 21/2 quarters but struggled as Orono’s shots began to fall. The Riots emerged with a 52-39 victory in the Class B matchup at the high school gym.

Orono is now 4-3. The Hawks fall to 2-6, their sixth loss in a row.

Neither team shot well, but the Red Riots overcame a 7-for-32 effort in the first half to make 11 of their 26 field-goal attempts in the second.

Marquez finished with a team-high 14 points, including nine in the second half.

“We shot a little better,” said Orono coach Steve Gardner. “We just weren’t shooting well. Some of the shots started to go in and that was the difference.”

Part of the problem stemmed from the defenses the Hawks played – first a triangle-and-2 to stop Jessica Wagner and Marquez, then a box-and-1 on Marquez.

“That’s the first time that’s happened to us this year so it took us a while to figure out what we were going to do,” Marquez said. “But other people stepped it up in the second half, Erica [Breton], Marilyn [Nichols], J-Wags [Wagner]. They started making layups that we were missing and I think that was the key.”

The game was tied seven times in the first half and knotted at 24-24 in the third quarter when Nichols scored off an inbounds pass from Marquez with 4:08 left in the period. Orono led from that point.

Marquez connected on a fast-break jump shot on the next possession. Orono’s Hilary See made a free throw, Wagner put back a rebound and scored again off a Marquez pass.

Hermon’s Rachel Jenkins converted a conventional 3-point play, but Marquez made a shot at the buzzer for a 35-27 lead.

Orono outscored Hermon 17-12 in the fourth to seal the win.

“We blocked off their cuts to the middle a lot more and we played a little more man-to-man,” Marquez said of the Riots’ second-half defensive effort. “We needed to be more intense and you can’t do that as well in zone.”

Orono had a substantial height advantage over the Hawks, who are 5-foot-8 at their tallest. The Riots, however, used the 5-10 Wagner for some easy inside layups. Wagner finished with 10 points and nine rebounds.

“We went man for about six minutes and they got a couple of lobs into her and it’s hard for us to defend that,” Hermon coach Don Erb said.

Nichols had nine rebounds to go with her 12 points, and Marquez chipped in with seven rebounds and five assists.

Taren Macdonald led Hermon with 13 points. Rachel Jenkins had 10.

Meanwhile, Erb said Lindsay Duplisea and Melissa Overlock, who are both out with knee injuries, are making progress. Overlock may return in at least two weeks.

“It’s a shame because I’ve been playing against those two since I was 5 years old,” Marquez said. “We would have loved to play against them. They still have Macdonald and she’s definitely a threat, so we had to take advantage of what we had which was definitely size.”

Red Riots 52, Hawks 39

Orono (4-3) Hermon (2-6)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG F AF TP

Breton 2 6 0 1 4 Wiggin 1 4 0 3

See 1 2 1 2 3 Hichborn 0 3 0

Dupere 1 6 2 2 4 Garland 0 0 0 0

Reed 1 2 0 0 2 Dobbins 1 2 0 2

Marquez 5 18 4 7 14 Macdonald 5 15 13

Nichols 4 11 2 2 10 Reynolds 2 6 4

Wagner 4 10 4 8 12 Smith 0 0 0 0

Gray 0 3 3 4 3 Frost 1 2 2 4

Jenkins 3 6 4 10

Buzzell 1 6 1 3

Totals 18 58 16 27 52 Totals 14 44 10 21 39

Orono 12 20 35 52

Hermon 12 20 27 39

3-pt. goals: Orono (0-4): Breton 0-1, Dupere 0-1, Marquez 0-2; Hermon (1-6): Wiggin 1-1, Buzzell 0-2, Macdonald 0-3

Attendance: 200 (est.)

Preliminary: Hermon JVs 28-12