It was Bob Geldof and the Boomtown Rats who uttered the words, “I don’t like Mondays” during their hit song of the early 1980s. Then came that corpulent canine Garfield who felt those very same sentiments.

Now chalk up the Dexter Tigers schoolgirl basketball team as another group of people who won’t take a liking to Mondays. Especially, Cory Monday. Monday, a 5-foot-5 junior point guard for the Maine Central Institute Huskies, sliced and diced her way through an often-porous Dexter defense en route to 12 points and 7 assists on Friday night. Those numbers, as well as her 5 steals, proved crucial as the third-seeded Huskies came up with a big second half to defeat sixth-ranked Dexter 52-36 in Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinal action at the Bangor Auditorium.

MCI, now 15-4, will play again at 2 p.m. Wednesday in a semifinal contest against the winner of Saturday’s Rockland-Ellsworth game.

Dexter finishes its season 11-8.

Coach Julie Treadwell credits Monday, a first-year transfer from Traip Academy in Kittery, with bringing a new dimension to her squad. While MCI star forward Steph Shaw was banging her way inside to a 23-point, 11-rebound performance, Monday and her “new dimension” was helping to keep the inside open for her bigger teammate.

“Cory’s done a lot for us this year,” Treadwell said. “She had to step onto a team that didn’t have a legitimate point guard. She brought to us the run-and-gun type of basketball and that `if-you-get-in-my-face, I’m-going-to-go by-you’ attitude. She’s a good complement to Steph Shaw.”

After a patient Dexter team took a 13-12 lead into the locker room at halftime, it was Monday that provided the spark for the Huskies in the second half.

After the teams went back and forth in the opening minutes and Dexter held a 20-17 lead, it was Monday who drove into the lane and dished off to teammate Becky Vaughan for an easy basket to close the gap to one.

After Dexter turned the ball over to MCI’s press, Vaughan picked up a loose ball and scored again to put MCI in the lead 21-20.

When the Tigers missed their next shot, Monday led the break down the court and connected on a pull-up jumper from six feet to push the Huskies’ lead to 23-20 with four minutes left in the quarter.

In the next two minutes, Monday sandwiched four free throws around a 15-footer from Dexter’s Mandy King (13 points, 4 steals) to keep the lead at three and then threw a nifty touchdown pass to teammate Emily Walker for an easy layup to push the lead 29-24.

After Kim Fotter made two foul shots for MCI and King hit another jumper for Dexter, Monday added a fastbreak layup of her own to make it 33-26 with 43 seconds remaining.

Dexter never recovered and MCI just made its foul shots throughout the fourth quarter.

“We had intensity the whole game and our defensive rebounding was really good,” Monday said. “That’s our game. We just had to box out, get the rebound, outlet to the hash mark and get into a running game.”

Behind Shaw (6-for-7) and Vaughan (4-for-4), the Huskies had a successful night shooting the ball, making half their shots (16-for-32). A 20-8 edge in made free throws also helped.

Dexter had problems finding the basket (14-for-51, 28 percent), especially once MCI started to control the tempo.

In the end, however, it was Monday showing up on Friday that proved to be the difference.