How big of a difference the return of a point guard can make.

Lincoln finished out last week with the low point of an up-and-down season. The Railsplitters lost to Adrian, 37-36, falling to a team with two SEC wins in their fourth straight defeat.

Thirty-six points was the team’s second-lowest point output of the season, and the team scored just 21 over the final three quarters.

“Our ball movement got stagnant and we didn’t get touches in the high post as much as we’d like,” Lincoln coach Rich Marion said then. “In the next three quarter we struggled against the zone.”

Tuesday was the opposite. The Railsplitters nearly doubled their offensive output in a 71-47 win over Chelsea. Seventy-one points marked the most Lincoln has scored this season.

The difference: Railsplitters point guard Sherrod Motley-Dismuke returned to full strength from a four-game absence to score 14 points.

After an injury in practice, Motley-Dismuke missed four games and was hobbled for the Adrian game. Tuesday was a different story.

“Last night was his first full game ready to go, back in game shape, and he looked like it,” Marion said. “It’s really a boost.”

And with less than two weeks to go before district play, the Railsplitters hope it can point them in the right direction heading into the postseason.

“I’m just glad they were rewarded with a good performance and getting back in the win column,” Marion said. “I think they needed that for their psyche going forward.”

Motley-Dismuke was one of three Railsplitters to score in double figures Tuesday. Tyler Mabry had 17 points and Lazon Hicks had 14.

The resurgence of Lincoln’s offense bodes well heading into a Thursday Game of the Week matchup on the road against Dexter, 7 p.m. in the teams’ second-to-last league games of the season.

Dexter is coming off of its third-lowest scoring output of the season Tuesday, but managed a win over Tecumseh, 35-28.

“It was a low scoring, slug-it-out kind of game,” Dexter coach Randy Swoverland said. “We got up on them early and maintained that lead.”

The game will be a rematch of an earlier season matchup that came down to the final buzzer, when Lincoln’s Tyler Hinton drove the length of the floor and hit a bucket with less than a second left to give his team a 48-46 win.

To earn the sweep over Dexter and a chance to move into a tie for second in the league standings, Marion said his team will need to communicate well on defense and get hands in the faces of the Dreadnaughts' skilled shooters.

“You have to be real solid in what you do defensively,” Marion said.

Kyle Austin covers sports for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kyleaustin@annarbor.com or 734-623-2535. Follow him on Twitter @KAustin_AA.