It was apparent that playing for the third time in four days was wearing on the Seabury Academy boys and girls basketball squads Friday.

Then University Academy used its speed to exhaust the already tired Seahawks even more.

“We couldn’t prepare for their quickness because we played last night (Thursday),” Seabury boys coach Matthew Downing Jr. said following his team’s 56-24 loss. “And, secondly, it’s hard to duplicate that kind of quickness in practice.”

The boys team was on its heels from the get-go, in large part due to University Academy’s full-court press, and fell behind 16-2 after the opening quarter.

“We’ve seen presses all year, so it’s no surprise to us,” Downing said. “We just haven’t gotten better at it, and that’s my fault. I’ll take that off the kids, and we’ll get after it on Monday.”

The press forced the Seahawks to turn the ball over 28 times. Seabury’s offense made just nine of 37 shot attempts.

“It’s tough to score points when you can’t get the ball across halfcourt,” said Seabury’s Bill Gibbs, who had a team-high 10 points. “We tried to get into our offense, but when we’re so scrambled getting down there, there’s not much we can do. We got antsy. We got afraid, and it messed with us, and that was effective.”

An already short bench got shorter for Downing in the second half and made it more difficult to get his starters a break. The Seahawks were without the services of starter Skyler Malone after he went down because of an ankle injury in the second quarter.

“That’s always tough, considering we have five strong players, and when we lose one for the entire second half that’s really a shot,” Gibbs said. “He’s a good player, and he can knock down shots and has really scored a lot of points for us. So it was really hurting us.”

The Seahawks girls team, on the other hand, kept its game close until the fourth quarter when the Gryphons pulled away for a 39-28 victory.

“We were definitely getting tired having played on Tuesday and Thursday, so we’re definitely a little tuckered out,” said Seabury’s Bria Phipps, who led all scorers with 17 points. “We lost to them a lot more when we played them earlier in the season (64-7) so I still think there was a huge improvement.”

Seabury trailed by just two points after three quarters, but was held without a basket in the fourth.

University Academy’s defense forced the Seahawks into 11 turnovers in the final quarter and allowed just six shot attempts.

“Whether you’re tired or whatever, you’ve just got to fight through that sometimes and a few plays here and there and we get the win,” Seabury girls coach Nick Taylor said.