VINALHAVEN – They knew he was coming, but there wasn’t much they could do about him. Not when the “he” is 6-foot-9 Valley of Bingham senior Brian Andre, and the “they” are the boys on the Vinalhaven basketball team, whose tallest player is 6-2.

Indeed, Andre ruled on both the offensive and defensive ends as the Cavaliers rolled through the Vikings 92-25 in the second game of a doubleheader at the school gym here Monday afternoon. The win was the 97th straight for Dwight Littlefield’s team, which is the four-time defending Class D state champion.

The Valley girls used a tenacious full-court press to sink Vinalhaven as the Cavaliers earned a 60-31 victory in the morning game. The Valley squads took an 8:45 a.m. ferry from Rockland to this island in the Penobscot Bay in order to get in both games Monday.

Andre said that standing on the deck of the boat in the cold stiffened up his legs a bit. But it didn’t take long for him to get loose and score a game-high 19 points to go with 10 rebounds.

“My legs hurt,” he said. “I just froze up. But it’s tradition to stand out there.”

Vinalhaven sophomore Ken Spaulding said with Andre under the basket, the Vikings were looking to score from the perimeter.

“We had to face the fact that he was going to get a lot of our rebounds,” he said. “We had to try our best to box out, do what we could, take the outside shots instead of feeding our post players.”

Eric Beckman -the 6-2 center – electrified the home crowd when he put in a jumper for the first basket of the game and Vinalhaven’s zone defense with 6-1 sophomore Dylan Hunsinger shadowing Andre actually held Valley to one point in the first 21/2 minutes of the first quarter. But Luke Hartwell put in a hoop at the 5:30 mark as the Cavaliers went up 3-2, and that sparked a 16-0 run that ended when Viking Josh Miller stuck a 3-pointer.

Valley put back offensive rebounds, scored transition hoops off its man-to-man defense, and used good ball movement – at times the Cavs’ passes were so perfect that it seemed as if the ball knew where it was going – to go up 41-14 at halftime.

“Early on we were doing a good job focusing on the techniques of the game, but we got sloppier and sloppier as we lost our energy,” Spaulding said. “If we had been able to keep our energy up, we would have done well against them.”

Three other Valley players finished in double figures. Sophomore Chris Atwood came off the bench and scored 14 points, including a 6-for-8 effort from the field in the fourth quarter; senior Mark Gaudet hit three 3-pointers in the second quarter en route to 13 points; and senior Hartwell had all 12 of his points in the first half.

Sophomore Josh Doughty paced the Vikings with 11 points (he had eight of Vinalhaven’s nine second-quarter points). Beckman, who clearly struggled to get open against Andre, finished with six points.

“We knew about [Doughty], but we didn’t play help-side [defense],” Andre said. “We figured we’d let him shoot because he’s not going to outscore our whole team.”

In the girls game, the Cavaliers forced 19 first-half turnovers and were successful converting them into offense, especially in the first quarter.

“We knew they’d struggle a little with it, because they’re young, but we’ve done well with it this year,” Valley coach Gordon Hartwell said of his squad’s full-court pressure.

Valley’s press worked almost immediately. After opening the game with a foul, the Cavaliers stole the ball as the Vikings were trying to get the ball out of the backcourt, and Carolyn Robinson fed Melanie Vicneire for a layup. The press forced another turnover, which Vicneire converted on a jumper; yet another backcourt steal later in the quarter became a Breanna Belanger jumper.

Six of Vinalhaven’s 12 first-quarter turnovers came against the press.

Vinalhaven coach Torry Pratt said three of her starters and top ballhandlers were sick Monday. Junior guard-forward Kim Walker did not play, while sophomore guard Chelsea Osgood and freshman forward Brianna Osgood both played sporadically.

“We were really hurt with those three girls not playing,” Pratt said. “We’re not really deep, so we came out already in trouble. And I knew without Chelsea and Kim helping, we weren’t going to get the ball up on the press.”

Robinson scored 14 points and racked up 11 rebounds. She was the only double-digit scorer, but the Cavs didn’t seem to miss any offense. Three players finished with nine points and another tallied eight points. The rebounding effort was also well-rounded: after Robinson, Jessica Fitzmaurice grabbed 10 rebounds, Loretta Fitzmaurice had seven, and Emma McAllister added six.

Belanger said one of the Cavs’ goals was to outscore the Vikes in the third quarter – which they did, 10-6.

“The last time we played they outscored us in the third quarter, which was not what our coach wanted,” she said. “We definitely had to step up.”

Pratt had her players in a 2-1-2 zone that occasionally dropped into a 2-3.

Osgood scored six points in the game while Kim Smith, an athletic 5-9 freshman, had nine rebounds and three blocks to go with five points.

CAVALIERS 92, VIKINGS 25

Valley (13-0) Vinalhaven (2-12)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP

Hibbard 3 6 0 0 6 Miller 1 11 3

Poulin 4 6 0 0 9 Turner 0 0 0

Atwood 7 10 0 0 14 J. Doughty 3 14 5 7 11

Melcher 0 4 1 2 1 K. Doughty 0 0

Marsh 0 1 0 0 0 Spaulding 0 1

J. Hartwell 2 6 0 0 4 Weller 0 1 0

L. Hartwell 6 8 0 0 12 Hunsinger 0 0

Andre 9 11 1 2 19 Philbrook 0 0

Gaudet 5 8 0 0 13 McCarthy 0 0

Gilbert 4 8 0 0 8 Beckman 3 7 6

Miller 3 4 0 2 6 Dwyer 1 1 4

Hussey 0 1 0 0

Totals 43 72 2 6 92 Totals 8 36 14 25

Valley 19 41 64 92

Vinalhaven 5 14 19 25

3-pt. goals ? Valley (4-5): Gaudet 3-3, Poulin 1-1, L. Hartwell 0-1; Vinalhaven (1-8): Miller 1-3, J. Doughty 0-5

Attendance: 175 (est.)

CAVALIERS 60, VIKINGS 31

Valley girls (12-1) Vinalhaven (6-8)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP

Rich 1 2 0 0 2 Walker 0 0 0 0

Roderick 0 0 0 0 0 Pratt 2 5 4

Melcher 1 6 6 6 8 C. Osgood 2 6

Robinson 7 16 0 0 14 Conlan 2 2 4

Belanger 4 12 0 2 9 Rasmussen 1 2

McAllister 1 4 1 4 3 Smith 2 10 5

J. Fitzmaurice 4 7 1 2 9 Dickey 0 1

Vicneire 4 14 1 2 9 McCarthy 1 2

Laweryson 1 5 0 0 2 B. Osgood 1 2

L. Fitzmaurice 2 6 0 3 4 Carleton 2

Jones 1 3 1 3

Totals 25 72 9 19 60 Totals 12 47 10 31

Valley 22 41 51 60

Vinalhaven 5 12 18 31

3-pt. goals ? Valley (1-6): Belanger 1-6; Vinalhaven (2-5): C. Osgood 2-4, Dickey 0-1

Attendance: 175 (est.)