OLD TOWN, Maine — There will be no flying under the early-schedule radar for the Old Town basketball team this season after the Coyotes surged late last winter to win the Class B state championship.
It doesn’t seemed to matter.
Coach Brian McDormand’s club is now 5-0 after Saturday’s 66-42 victory over Caribou at MacKenzie Gymnasium in the rematch of the 2014 Eastern Maine final won by the Coyotes in overtime.
Old Town has defeated its Big East Conference opponents to date by an average of 24 points per game, with no foe coming closer than 16 — last Tuesday’s 64-48 victory at Ellsworth.
“We knew tonight this was going to be our first test to see exactly where we were, and that we were pretty much going to have to play perfect to win,” said Caribou coach Chris Casavant. “They’re good, and without seeing anyone else I would say they’re the best team in our conference.”
Old Town employed a triangle-and-two defense to limit Caribou’s brother combination of Dayne Savage and Donovan Savage to 17 points, with Kaleb Gifford, Drew Coulombe and Tyler Gifford drawing the man-to-man assignments.
“We had to lock down the Savage brothers,” said Old Town senior guard Eric Hoogterp, who led the offense with a game-high 20 points despite foul trouble that sidelined him for much of the first half. “The majority of their scoring comes from them so we knew if we could lock them down we’d be all right.”
Senior forward Mitchell Cole added 14 points and eight rebounds despite playing just 2 minutes, 57 seconds of the first half due to his own two early fouls.
He scored all his points and grabbed seven rebounds after intermission as Old Town built on a 25-16 halftime lead, and his rangy 6-foot-4-inch presence at the top of the Coyotes’ three-man defensive triangle proved troubling to Caribou’s comeback hopes.
“Mitch Cole really made a difference at the top of the triangle,” said McDormand, whose team has won its last 15 games. “He’s perfect for that spot. Once we started figuring out that they were running screen-and-roll off that and got Mitch up over the screen it really made them struggle.”
Center Adam Richardson, the third senior starter in the lineup, added 13 points and nine rebounds in helping Old Town back up its win over previously unbeaten Ellsworth.
“We knew we had some tough teams coming up, and we’ve been working toward this for a long time,” said Richardson, whose team faces another test Tuesday at Class C contender Orono. “Every day we’re getting better, and in better shape. We’re still hungry.”
Caribou (3-1) battled Old Town to an 11-11 stalemate through the end of the first quarter. As both teams experienced foul trouble — the teams combined for 20 fouls during the first half — the Vikings couldn’t match the quality of the Coyotes’ depth.
That was particularly evident on the offensive end as Caribou endured a scoring drought of 6:17 that enabled Old Town to turn an 11-8 deficit into a 17-11 lead on a 3-pointer by Kaleb Gifford with 5:26 left in the half.
Caribou was within 25-16 at halftime and scored six straight points to draw within 29-22 on back-to-back baskets by Dayne Savage two minutes into the third quarter.
But Coulombe answered with a 3-pointer and Cole scored off a long outlet pass by Hoogterp for a quick five Old Town points good for a double-digit cushion the Coyotes’ maintained through the end of the period.
The Old Town lead was 41-29 entering the fourth quarter, and after Caribou snuck within 43-34 on a Timothy Dassow 3-pointer with 7:17 left Old Town scored 14 unanswered points — five by Cole and four each by Hoogterp and Richardson — to put the game away.
Dayne Savage led Caribou with 14 points, but no one else scored more than five for the Vikings, who face their second defending state champion in a row Tuesday night when they visit reigning Class C titlist Houlton.
“We knew this game was going to be tough,” said Casavant, “but we also said that this was not a make-or-break game, it was just a test to see where we are. We’ve got all sorts of games left, and if you think back to last year we came down here and got beat quite handily also, but we played in the Eastern Maine final.”
