Although Saturday’s girls basketball state champions got most of their offensive production out of their forwards and centers, guards for both Dexter and Woodland came up with big games, too.

For the Class D champ Dragons, the defense provided by Rachel Torrey, Katie Murphy, and Lacey Gillespie helped tire out Valley star Kristin Baker, while their ballhandling and shooting helped extend the Dragon lead and get the ball inside to post players Courtney Cochran and Michelle Ferry.

The guards for the Class C Tigers, Nicci Burton and Tracy Mountain – and forward Sabrina Cote, who frequently handles the ball – rebounded, dealt with a tough Hall-Dale press, and hit two perimeter shots along the way, something Dexter doesn’t do on a regular basis.

In the Class D game, Murphy was given the tough task of guarding Baker, who averaged around 24 points per game in the regular season and scored 82 points in the Western Maine tournament.

“Katie Murphy is the unsung hero of this basketball team,” Woodland coach Arnie Clark said. “Every night she takes the best offensive player and harasses the devil out of them. She’s a small girl, but she’s got a Cadillac engine inside.”

Baker finished with 28 points, but hit 11 of 29 field-goal attempts (37.9 percent). She was 5-for-13 from 3-point range.

Murphy knew all week she had the toughest defensive task on the floor.

“Our strategy was to make her pick up her dribble and just stop her from shooting and driving,” Murphy said. “She was good. I was expecting her to be really fast.”

Gillespie backed up Cochran (24 points) and Ferry (10 points) with 10 points of her own. She hit four of six shots in the first half as she found holes in Valley’s 1-2-2 zone.

Torrey had a quiet offensive effort, although she made four critical free throws in the final two minutes. But Clark likes that Torrey does a lot of little things for the Dragons.

“She hasn’t really found her offensive niche yet, but she does such a good job on defense and pushing the ball,” he said.

Torrey was named all-tourney honorable mention last week.

The fact that all five Dragons contributed something Saturday was the key to the win, and to the season as a whole.

“There was no one person that we relied on for all aspects of the game,” Clark added. “We just had a lot of little pieces that we put together. I didn’t even go to the bench today, but we have two excellent ballplayers in [Gena Clark] and Julia Nicholas, and they both do an excellent job at guard. We just thought things were going alright and we didn’t use them.”

Dexter’s guards also did a lot of little things in the Tigers’ 45-38 win over the Bulldogs of Farmingdale. The meshing of this season’s backcourt has been a process, Burton said.

“Last year we lost a lot of people, so this year we came in and worked really hard,” she said. “We wanted to get our ballhandling skills up and our shooting ability up so we could shoot from the outside. We had a little bit of variation in our offense.”

That was a big difference between last year’s state championship game and the stats from this year’s matchup.

Going up against Dirigo of Dixfield in 2005, the Tigers took no 3-point shots and few long-range field-goal attempts, settling instead to pump the ball inside to 6-4 Ashley Ames, now graduated, and 6-6 Mallory Ames, who was a sophomore last year, along with Cote’s penetration.

Against Hall-Dale, Burton and Cote each hit a 3-pointer, although Cote conceded hers was more of a desperation shot.

“Mine came at the end of the quarter, but Nicci’s an excellent shooter,” Cote said. “I had total confidence in her.”

Mountain made a jump shot of her own in the third quarter to give the Tigers a 12-point lead.

“We knew we needed to hit shots, work it around, be patient,” Burton said. “If we could hit a couple of outside shots they couldn’t double-team Mallory and Katie [Poirier] inside.”

Mountain and Burton combined for seven rebounds.

Like Woodland, Dexter’s win was a matter of everyone helping out.

“We all stepped it up and did our best,” Ames said.