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SCITUATE - For three quarters of Friday night's game, the Seekonk High School boys' basketball team was playing the role of David to Scituate's Goliath to perfection.

In the fourth quarter, however, this Goliath reminded everyone that he's bigger and meaner than anyone else on the block.

Pounding the ball into the paint for seven baskets in the first 3:36 of the final quarter, the host Sailors exploited their prohibitive height advantage to its fullest to remove whatever remaining doubt there was about the outcome of this MIAA Division 3-South tournament quarterfinal.

On the strength of a 20-0 run at the start of the quarter, No. 4-seed Scituate eliminated a very game No. 5 Seekonk squad, 72-52.

"For three quarters, it was pretty good," Seekonk coach Rick Patch said. "We got the game within one or two and what happened was, they had such pressure defense, it was extremely strong and it got us way out of offensive positions. "When that happens," he added, "we tend to rely for everything from Tyler (Patch). That's the best defense we've seen all year, and he really earned his points tonight."

Patch, the coach's son, scored a hard-earned 27 points on 10-for-22 shooting, including four three-pointers that, by necessity, were thrown in from at least a body length or more beyond the 19-foot, 9-inch arc.

The defeat marked the end of Patch's stellar high school career. His 27 points thrust him into the school's all-time scoring lead with a total of 1,746, breaking the 16-year-old record of Kim Lynch (1,728). That total also became the new standard for all boys playing for the 11 schools that constitute The Sun Chronicle's coverage area, bettering the previous high of 1,725 points amassed by Dighton-Rehoboth's Tom Blessing through the 1999-2000 season.

Many believed that Seekonk (18-4), young and small at several positions and wracked by injuries all season long, didn't have a prayer against the taller, tourney-tested Sailors. And it didn't help that on the first Warrior possession, Patch went sprawling to the floor, gasping for air, after taking an elbow to the solar plexus.

He wasn't out for long, but the Sailors were able to take a 9-2 lead during his absence and extend that to 13-6 by quarter's end.

The Scituate lead reached a first-half high of 12 points on a putback basket by senior Harry Rose with 4:47 left in the half and stayed there until Patch hit one of his monster-distance threes with 1:20 to go, the basket with which he broke Lynch's school record.

Kyle Charron and Josh Roza combined for three free throws in the last 51 seconds to give Seekonk a nice 6-2 springboard into the second half, the deficit down to a workable 33-25.

If anything, the Sailors expended more energy in the first half trying to intimidate the Warriors with their physical nature than they did paying attention to the fundamentals of passing and shooting, and as a result, their 14-for-36 shooting (38.9 percent) represented a lot of lost opportunities to run away with the game.

So, there were plenty of nervous souls in the packed Scituate High gym when Patch hit his first shot of the second half, a 28-foot three-pointer, followed by another three by Alex Miller from the left side to whittle the Sailors' lead to a mere two points, 33-31, with just 1:22 gone.

"It was aggressive play and it took a little while to get used to, but once we got used to it, we adjusted and came out in the third quarter and played pretty well," the elder Patch said. "We felt that energy and we got back into the game but our defense started to spread out. That opened it up inside a little bit." True to his words, the Sailors pounded the ball inside to 6-foot-9 senior Sean McCarthy on the next two possessions, getting a three-point play and an easy basket out of it. That was the start of a 14-2 run, resulting in a 47-33 lead with 2:19 left, but Patch threw in a pair of baskets around a putback by Scituate's Rodney Beldo to trail by 12 (49-37) entering the final quarter.

Scituate wasted no time in putting the game out of Seekonk's reach, scoring 15 unanswered points in just the first 1:51, starting with a determined power move by 6-foot-6 senior Blaine O'Brien. McCarthy added three baskets and Beldo accounted for eight points as the run reached 20 points and the lead reached 69-37.

Patch finally stopped the bleeding with a 17-footer with 2:52 left. That started a 15-4 run, in which the Warrior senior scored nine points - the last two of his high school career coming on two free throws with 30.6 seconds left.

Beldo, the outstanding sophomore guard, paced Scituate with 19 points. McCarthy added 15 points and 10 rebounds and O'Brien added 12 rebounds and four assists to his six points.

For Seekonk, Charron backed up Patch with 11 points and Mike Quinn acquitted himself well on the boards with seven.

"They're good, they're big, they're the best team in Division 3-South," the elder Patch said of Scituate, which advances to a semifinal-round meeting with top-seeded Medfield at a site and time to be determined. "I'm just proud of how well we played for three quarters we've just got 16 kids, varsity and junior varsity combined, and of any team in my six years at Seekonk that deserved a win in its second tournament game, it's this one."