TOPSHAM, Maine — After beating rival Brunswick on Thursday, 66-56, the Mt. Ararat High School boys basketball team was able to leapfrog Bangor to take over the final playoff spot at No. 9 in the Eastern A Heal Point Standings.
However, to sustain its position, the Eagles had to beat the Rams on Friday night in the Eagles’ season finale.
With the momentum from Thursday night’s game against the Dragons still lingering, the Eagles walked away with a crucial 61-55 Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference victory.
The Eagles are now 7-11 and Bangor is 5-12 with a finale at noon Saturday at Brewer.
“The style of basketball that we played in the first half was much like what we played like in Brunswick,” Mt. Ararat’s head coach Steve Cox said. “It gave us that success that we had there. [Tonight] our legs got tired, motions got tight, play got physical, but we hung on. High school basketball is a game of surges and we gave them our surge in the first half and we fought off theirs enough in the second.”
“We had that stretch in the second quarter where we had some great looks and lay-ups around the rim that we missed,” Bangor head coach Ed Kohtala said. “And I thought for one of the few times this year we took that frustration and those misses to the defensive end and it was during that stretch that the margin grew.”
Both teams answered each other’s shots over the first couple of minutes in the first quarter, with Rams forward Justin Smith dishing up a 3-pointer to give his team a quick 3-0 lead. However, less than 30 seconds later Mason Griffin pivoted on a quick pass by Shy Ulrickson and threw up a 3-pointer of his own to tie it.
Bangor held the edge for the majority of the opening quarter, but the Eagles grabbed a hold of it when Ulrickson hit a 3-pointer with 15 seconds remaining, pushing his team ahead 13-11.
“This was such a big game,” Griffin said. “We were that close the whole season, the first few games were one-, two-, three-point games and now we’re coming in and finishing them.”
That aspect of finishing held true through the remainder of the game, but once more specifically in the second quarter. The Eagles hit the ground running, with an 8-0 spurt to start another 9-0 run to end it, including a Mike Crawford 3-pointer that hit right before the buzzer to send it into halftime with Mt. Ararat leading 38-21.
The script flipped in the second half as the Rams took control of the momentum, outscoring the Eagles 34-23, while hitting all five foul shots they were awarded. Bangor’s Ethan Dorman drained two shots at the charity stripe and soon followed with a three-point play after being fouled inside to get things going. The remainder of the quarter looked similar to the first, where both teams exchanged shots, but the Rams took the edge, 15-13.
“I think we did a better job rebounding,” Kohtala said. “Even when we went small, we tried to get a little more quickness on the floor, which I think helped us some. We gave up a little bit of rebounding in that stretch, but overall I think it was a net gain for us.
“There was also the chance that Mt. Ararat, which played great against Brunswick and were feeling good, may have relaxed a little bit too. Our guys took advantage of that opportunity and fought and made a game of it. Credit to our kids and credit to Mt. Ararat, I mean they’re well-balanced, you game plan for Shy and Griffin and take a chance with the other guys, but tonight those other guys stepped up and made plays.”
Griffin and Ulrickson paced the team with 18 and 11 points, respectively, but Avery Desjardins contributed 14 points of his own off the bench, including three 3-pointers in the first half.
Smith finished with 20 points and Dorman added 16 to lead Bangor.