When asked what teams the Dragons should fear as they embarked on their 2009-10 season, Duxbury Head Coach Gordon Cushing said, “There is Scituate and Hingham, and then there is the rest of us.”

So far the Duxbury coach is 50 percent right after watching the Scituate Sailors dismantle his team with an easy 72-47 victory before a packed house in Scituate on Friday night.

After a pair of Aaron Kramer free throws tied the game at 4-4, it was all Scituate the rest of the night, as Rodney Beldo led an 11-point run for a 15-4 lead with 4:30 left in the first quarter.

The Dragons did manage to cut into the lead late in the period, and they ended the first eight minutes on an up note, as senior captain Mike Sullivan nailed a shot at the buzzer to close the gap to 20-13.

Scituate maintained its seven-point margin early in the second quarter, despite the efforts of junior Connor Kindregan, who hit a pair of hoops to keep the Dragons in the game.

The Sailors slowly increased their lead to 36-23 before a C.J. Cote free throw and a Brian Grossman basket cut the lead to 10.

When Beldo touches the ball, anything can happen and it did, as the senior launched a shot beyond mid-court that swished swish through the net as time expired.

Duxbury needed to dig in and play defense in the third quarter if they wanted to stay in the game. What they got instead was an 11-2 Scituate run that put the game out of reach. Cushing called a timeout to stop the surge, hoping that the 20-point deficit (50-30) was the low point of the evening.

The break in the action did little, as the Sailors went on an 11-1 run to end the quarter and signal that it was time to unload the benches.

Marquimm Taylor and Beldo led the way for Scituate with 13 points each, while Kramer (7) led 12 Duxbury players who scored in the lopsided battle.

“Except for a two or three-minute flash when we pounded them on the boards, we got beat in every single facet of the game,” said Cushing. “The good part about this is that it is a long season and we’re going to get better. It was a tough game and I didn’t think it was going to be as tough. But I knew it would be a challenge.”

After traveling to Whitman-Hanson next Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., the Dragons will return home to host the ProSports Holiday Classic on Monday, Dec. 28 at 7 p.m. when they take on Dartmouth. Marshfield will tackle Latin Academy in the opener with the winners to face off on Tuesday night in the championship game at 7 p.m.