For the La Salle boys basketball team, revenge was a dish better served hot.

Matched up in the Division I sectional semifinals against the same Fairfield team that ended their season last year in the sectional finals, the Lancers drilled their first four shots to go up by nine and then hit their first four in the second quarter to build a 15-point lead on the way to a 56-34 victory nearly a year to the day after last year’s disappointment.

“Three hundred sixty-one days, but who’s counting,” said La Salle head coach Dan Fleming, whose eighth-seeded Lancers (17-7) will face No. 18 Elder, an upset winner against No. 7 Winton Woods, for the sectional championship at 5 p.m. Friday.

“We dominated the game from start to finish,” Fleming added. “Whenever you get off to a good start, it kind of propels itself.”

No. 9 Fairfield ended its season, which produced the program’s first Greater Miami Conference championship in 26 years, with a record of 15-9 after using last year’s upset of La Salle to make a run all the way to the state semifinals.

“Give them credit, they came out and they were the aggressor from the tip,” Indians coach Tim Austin said. “To be honest, I don’t know that we ever fully recovered. They just had us reeling.”

La Salle junior guard Jeffrey Larkin led all scorers with 22 points, while senior guard Conner Speed added eight.

Junior guards Herman Brunis (12 points) and Tim Fleming (eight) paced Fairfield, which made just 1 of 11 3-pointers and 7 of 15 free throws.

“We just got out-coached, out-played, out-competed,” Austin said. “No excuses. We just got beat.”

La Salle didn’t maintain its hot starts to the first two quarters, but the defense picked up the slack, forcing Fairfield into 15 turnovers.

“For 361 days I’ve had the taste in my mouth of how bad we played and how disappointing our season ended last year,” Fleming said. “When (the Indians) jumped in with us, I can’t tell you how happy I was. I said, ‘They deserved to beat us last year, but we’re going to get them back this year.’ And we definitley got them back this year.”