By Arielle Aronson, Globe Correspondent

Their fourth, and final meeting of the season was like no other. In what was expected to be a close, thrilling Division 1 North semifinal, the defending state champion Andover High girls' basketball team dominated Central Catholic, 60-33, Wednesday night at Methuen High School.

The Golden Warriors (24-1) set the tone early, opening the first quarter with a 9-0 run and finishing the first half with a 39-19 lead. Andover junior captain Nicole Boudreau finished with 31 points, 21 of which came in the first half.

“We were really focused,” Andover coach James Tildsley said. “We had a lot of pressure on us to win that game and they did it.”

Andover made a few adjustments on defense, including shifting the Boston College-bobund Boudreau over to cover Central sophomore Casey McLaughlin, and that seemed to make all the difference. The Golden Warriors held Central Catholic (20-3) to only 14 points in the second half. McLaughlin finished her night with 13 points.

“She’s killed us in the past couple of games,” Boudreau said of McClaughlin. “I was trying to force her left because she’s definitely strong going to her right. I had to box her out because she just crashes, she gets rebounds. That was my job today to stop Casey, and she’s a great player.”

Tildsley also put senior captain Natalie Gomez-Martinez on the Raiders’ Melissa Miller and senior captain Ally Fazio on Gabie Polce. Tildsley credited the idea to change the individual matchups to his players.

“I changed my coaching style so I listen to the kids a lot,” Tildsley said. “They said, ‘we should change these matchups.’ So I said okay, let’s give it a go, and it worked. Of course they told me at the end of the game, ‘we told you those matchups would work.’ So you have to listen to the kids once in a while.”

Despite the matchups, the Raiders were still able to get plenty of shots off from the inside, but they kept missing their shots. The offensive performance was a shocking one for Central Catholic coach Susan Downer, as the Raiders had only scored under 50 points once this season -- a 53-43 loss to Andover. They also lost the second meeting, 53-52, but Central had taken the third on Feb. 6, 61-57.

“That’s not the team that I coached all season,” Downer said. “I was just like what just happened. We couldn’t execute anything. I’m speechless.”

Andover will play Acton-Boxborough in the North final Friday afternoon (3:15) at TD Garden.

As she returned to a huddle of her teammates near the Andover bench, however, Boudreau had just one thing on her mind.

“We get to practice tomorrow,” she exclaimed as her teammates surrounded her.