OLD TOWN – The Old Town boys basketball team used perimeter defensive pressure to build a modest halftime lead against rival Orono on Tuesday night.

The Coyotes then used red-hot shooting in the second half to break the game open.

Junior forward Colin Ziegenbein and senior center Ethan Shanley combined to make 12 of 14 shots after intermission and Old Town shot 72 percent overall after the break to pull away to a 65-47 victory on Senior Night at MacKenzie Gymnasium.

Old Town held a 23-18 halftime lead, but the Coyotes made their first eight shots of the third quarter while outscoring Orono 18-7 to move out to a 41-25 lead on a 3-pointer by Brad Wilkens with 3:31 left in the period.

The shots came from 15 feet and closer, either in transition after Orono turnovers or thanks to an offense that grew patient enough to capitalize on screens along the baseline.

“It was just the team trying to get us open,” said Ziegenbein, who scored nine of his game-high 19 points in the period. “We set great screens, and they got us open.”

Old Town closed out the period with a 47-31 lead, then stretched that margin to 51-33 when Ziegenbein – who made all eight of his field-goal tries during the game – took high-quality entry passes from Josh Boucher and Shanley for back-to-back layups.

The Coyotes made 18 of 25 shots from the field after intermission and 27 of 46 (59 percent) for the game.

“Orono came out and played us harder defensively than we expected, and I told the kids at halftime that we can’t let them dictate what we do,” said Old Town coach Marty Clark. “We just had to screen better, wait for screens better and come off screens better.”

Shanley added 17 points and a game-high 12 rebounds for the 11-6 Coyotes, who close out their season at top-ranked Presque Isle on Friday night in its bid to earn a home Class B preliminary-round contest.

Orono, 11-6 and ranked fifth in Eastern Maine Class C, got 16 points from senior guard Dwyer, but Old Town was relatively content in limiting the Red Riots’ 1,000-point scorer to just four field goals to go with a 7-of-10 night from the free-throw line.

“Basically we just wanted to key on Dwyer,” said Old Town senior guard Evan Paradis, who had game-high totals of six steals and five assists. “That’s what our practice the night before was all about, just trying to stop him, and I think we did a pretty good job of making it tough for him to score.”

Orono took an 8-4 lead in the game’s first 3 minutes, 51 seconds, but Old Town then held the Red Riots without a field goal for a stretch of 11:09 and just one field goal for the remainder of the half.

Paradis and senior guard Mamadou Ba were defensive catalysts, each with three first-half steals as Old Town intercepted several of Orono’s perimeter passes.

“What you’ve got to do is make it look like it’s open, stay off them two or three feet, and once they pass it, then you just go for it,” said Paradis.

Orono’s defense, which early in the game included both man-to-man and 3-2 zone sets, enabled the Red Riots to hang around, but eight points from Ba and seven from Shanley helped give Old Town a five-point lead into the break.

“On tape we could see that they liked to move the ball on the perimeter, look to swing it again and then look to Dwyer off screens,” said Clark. “We wanted to get up in those passing lanes and get a deflection or just make it hard for them to swing.”

Junior forward Lee Hecker added 10 points for Orono, which hosts Penquis of Milo on Thursday.

eclark@bangordailynews.net

990-8045

COYOTES 65, ORONO 47

Orono (11-6) Old Town (11-6)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP

Coleman 1 1 0 0 2 Bartlett 1 4

Riemrsma 0 5 0 0 0 Boucher 3 5 6

Spencer 1 3 2 2 4 Paradis 1 4 2

Bates 0 1 0 0 0 Hussey 0 0 2

Nason 3 3 3 6 9 Ba 4 8 8

Patterson 0 1 0 0 0 Shorey 0 2 0

Dwyer 4 9 7 10 16 Zgenbein 8 19

Talty 1 1 0 0 2 Wilkens 3 4 7

Levasseur 1 4 2 2 4 Enriquez 0 0

Haamid 0 0 0 0 0 Shanley 7 10 17

Hecker 5 6 0 0 10

Totals 16 34 14 20 47 Totals 27 46 10 13 65

Orono 8 18 31 47

Old Town 9 23 47 65

3-pt. goals – Orono (1-7): Dwyer 1-3, Riemersma 0-4; Old Town (1-8): Wilkens 1-2, Paradis 0-1, Ba 0-2, Bartlett 0-3

JV: Old Town 63-49

Attendance: 400 (est.)