SOUTH PARIS — Whatever pressure the Oxford Hills Vikings felt to get their coach into Maine’s 300-win club Friday night they immediately put on a young and short-handed Mt. Blue team.

The Vikings used their full court press to take command early and cruised to a 66-26 victory, which was the 300th of coach Scott Graffam’s career.

“We did it for him,” senior Ryan Godin said. “We wish we would have done it last year. It’s a good feeling that we did it for him this year.”

Graffam, who walked off the court to a standing ovation from fans and players after the game, downplayed the milestone. But the Vikings spoke volumes with their execution at both ends.

Oxford Hills (2-3) dominated the paint with junior Luke Davidson (23 points, 12 rebounds) and freshman Andrew Fleming (15 points, six rebounds, four assists, three blocks) leading the way. The Vikings shot 51 percent from the floor through the first three quarters, while the Cougars (0-4), who had to settle for jump shots once Oxford Hills shut down Kindle Bonsall’s (six points) penetration, shot just 19 percent from the floor.

“We have bigger guys underneath, especially against a team like this who doesn’t have a lot of strength underneath,” Davidson said. “We really push it to get points under the basket.”

The Vikings brought the full court pressure with a mix of 2-2-1 zone and man-to-man  to rattle the Cougars, who were playing without point guard Nate Backus, into nine first-quarter turnovers.

“We’ve gotten a lot better at (the press),” Graffam said. “They didn’t have their point guard and that hurt them, so we had to try to turn them over and get the ball down inside.”

The Vikings were also short-handed, playing without regulars Jordan Croteau, Ken Lynch and Dalton Rice, due to various injuries and illness. But they took advantage of the extra possessions created by the turnovers and hard work on the offensive boards by Davidson and Jake Plummer (four points, six rebounds) to open up a 20-8 lead.

A nice drive-and-dish from Plummer to a cutting Davidson and a steal and layup by Godin extended that lead to 26-10. Davidson scored twice more inside to inflate the margin to 18 at halftime.

Matters only got worse for the Cougars early in the second half when center Brad Durrell (six points, nine rebounds), their best inside antidote to Oxford Hills, went down with a sprained ankle.

Yet the Vikings didn’t need to look to the paint too often because Fleming started lighting it up from the outside, nailing back-to-back jumpers, one of them a 3-pointer, en route to nine points in the period.

“The first half I didn’t think we rebounded very well at all defensively. In the second half we did a lot better,” Graffam said. “Of course, we turned them over and that was the difference in the game.”

“We realistically start four guards and play four guards almost the entire game, so I definitely thought that my two bigs off the bench, Kody (Vining) and Elliott (McArthur) did a wonderful job when Brad went down with an injury,” Mt. Blue coach Josh Bishop said. “I don’t think we lost a beat as far as rebounding, so that’s something positive to take from it.”

Mt. Blue missed its first eight shots of the quarter as the Vikings went on a 17-0 run before Devon Hoyt broke it up with a three-point play with 51 seconds left in the third.

“The biggest thing I liked is we’re working hard regardless of how much we’re down,” Bishop said. “We’re young. We’re making mistakes. It’s just a matter of not hanging our heads and thinking poorly of ourselves.”