One day after the Boothbay boys basketball team pulled off a miraculous come from behind tournament victory, the Boothbay girls had one of their own, kind of. No. 1 Boothbay struggled early against No. 8 Traip Academy of Kittery by missing its first eight shots. In fact, it was the underdog Rangers who scored the game’s first basket three minutes into the contest.

But the Lady Seahawks’ full-court pressure defense began taking a toll on Traip outscoring the Rangers 11-2 en route to a 59-40 Class C South Girls quarterfinal victory Feb. 20. Boothbay had a fabulous regular season winning all 18 games. But the Class C tournament comes at a bad time for the top-ranked Seahawks. Boothbay has several players battling flu-like symptoms creating a major challenge for first year coach Brian Blethen.

“It wasn’t very pretty out there,” Blethen said. “We’ve had some sickness and we’ve been shifting some people around. Tonight, we spent a lot of time trying to get our personnel in the right places.”

Despite Boothbay’s struggles with personnel, its full-court defense created 20 Ranger first half turnovers. “I really thought we should’ve had more. I don’t think our backside rotation was good at all,” he said.

Boothbay was led in scoring by senior forward Page Brown with 24 points. Other Seahawk scorers were Glory Blethen with 11, Faith Blethen and Sydney Meader with eight, Chloe Arsenault with six and Kylie Brown with two.

Traip Academy finishes the season 8-11. Boothbay struggled early in the first quarter due to the Rangers’ focus on transition defense. “Traip did a great job on getting back on defense. They packed in that 1-3-1 zone making it difficult for our offense to get on track,” Coach Blethen said

Boothbay (19-0) advances to the regional semifinal against No. 4 Madison. The Lady Bulldogs defeated No. 5 Mount Abram of Salem Township 62-27. Boothbay and Madison play at 4 p.m. Thursday in Augusta.