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AUBURN — Edward Little’s defense was playing well enough, but the offense was making too many mistakes in Wednesday’s Class AA North boys basketball quarterfinal against rival Lewiston.

“We were making one-handed passes across the basket line that were just pointless,” Red Eddies senior Diing Maiwen said. “So we kept turning over the ball. They kept getting those and getting down. But, you know, once we picked that up in the second half and we’re, ‘Really just don’t turn over the ball,’ it’s fine. If our shots aren’t falling right now, we just got to stop them from scoring and our shots will fall.”

The Red Eddies cleaned up their mistakes enough to beat the Blue Devils 49-38 and advance to next week’s AA North semifinals.

How did Edward Little win?

• The Red Eddies held Lewiston (8-11) to one point in the third quarter. The Edward Little offense only managed eight points, but that was enough to turn a two-point halftime lead into a 37-28 advantage heading into the fourth.

“That second half, we went to halftime, and we’re like, this could be our last game, so let’s not make it that,” Maiwen said. “You know, we got to go out there and give our last 16 minutes of just 100%. So, we went out there, and just a lot of communication, talking when we’re switching, just recognizing guys that are shooters, when to stay down on guys.”

They said it

• “I think this is our first home playoff game in a few years now. And so it was great. We had the crowd behind us and it was awesome to come out here and get the win.” — Owen Galway

• “We just talked about how we need to tighten things up a little bit, but the biggest thing, emphasis, was taking care of the basketball. We had like 10 or 11 turnovers in the first half, and then a lot of them were just, you know, lazy with the ball, bad passes across the court — things that we can easily fix. I think we did a really good job taking care of that in the second half, taking care of the ball, and then just defensively staying locked in, knowing our assignments.” — Jimbo Philbrook

• “I don’t think the crowd affected us. Maybe a little bit the game before, but I thought we did a good job of trying to really keep our composure. When it’s all said and done, like I said, I keep coming back to it. We just couldn’t score.” — Lewiston coach Elgin Physic

Statistical leaders

• Lewiston: Lonnie Thomas (nine points), Deion Jackson (eight points), Abdirahman Dakane (seven points).

• Edward Little: Diing Maiwen (14 points), Akol Maiwen (12 points), Galway (nine points).

Up next

• Edward Little: vs. No. 1 Cheverus, 2:30 p.m. on Thursday.