BANGOR, Maine — The flu bug has been making the rounds over the last week or so, and the Presque Isle boys basketball team was the latest to get bitten.
Fortunately for the Wildcats, they didn’t bite the dust in their Eastern Maine Class B quarterfinal on Saturday.
Coach Tim Prescott’s second-seeded club outscored No. 10 Mount Desert Island 16-7 in the third quarter and hit its free throws in the fourth to earn a 47-41 victory at the Bangor Auditorium.
The Wildcats improved to 18-2 and face third-ranked Rockland in a 7:05 p.m. Wednesday semifinal while the Trojans finished at 12-8.
Junior forward Nate Ackerson was one Wildcat who was bitten the most by the flu, as he played limited minutes but canned a short jumper in the waning moments of the third quarter to put Presque Isle up 10.
“He’s been very ill. In the beginning of the game he was just wiped out, he could barely function,” said Prescott.
His teammates stepped up, though, as Russ Mortland poured in a game-high 22 points and was 7 for 12 from the foul line while Travis Dyer was the other Wildcat in double figures with 11.
The contest was tight throughout the first half, with the Trojans emerging ahead by six with a 10-2 second-quarter run capped by Nathan Ward’s breakaway dunk.
Ward, however, was assessed a technical foul for not letting go of the rim right away, and Mortland sank the ensuing free throws and hit a 3-pointer from the left corner in the final minute to help spur PI back into the lead by halftime.
The Wildcats gradually pulled away throughout the second half, mainly thanks to a balanced offensive attack and the defensive play of Jason Johnson, whose conventional 3-point play with 3:42 left in the fourth quarter gave PI an 11-point lead.
“There’s a situation where this kid’s been waiting for a long time to get more meaningful [playing] time than a couple minutes here, couple minutes there,” said Prescott. “Today we needed him, he came through in a huge way for us.”
MDI refused to go away, as its pressure defense bothered the Wildcats at times, but the Trojans were hampered by foul trouble to Ward, Jason Burke, Terrence Jones and Jasper Cousins, all of whom played with four fouls in the fourth quarter.
Those factors led to several Presque Isle trips to the free-throw line, and the Wildcats were 8 of 15 from the stripe in the final period.
“I’m incredibly proud of them, they had every reason in the world to just lose the game and go home but they didn’t,” said Prescott.
MDI coach Justin Norwood hopes advancing to the quarterfinals is a springboard in the right direction.
“I just told these guys we haven’t been to the Auditorium in four years, [so] for us to go to Winslow and get a win and get a chance to get our feet on the Auditorium floor and put a serious scare into the number two team, hopefully the younger kids take that and run with it next year,” said Norwood.
Cousins led the Trojans with 15 points, Burke scored nine and Hall eight.
