AUGUSTA, Maine — The Hampden Academy boys basketball team was on the verge of getting blown out of Saturday afternoon’s Eastern Maine Class A final.
The Lewiston Blue Devils were in the process of scoring 21 unanswered points against the Broncos and showing no signs of letting up.
But Hampden’s championship pedigree withstood that onslaught in remarkable fashion.
Coach Russ Bartlett’s club countered with a 15-0 blitz of its own that grew into a 30-9 game-ending run as the second-ranked Broncos earned their fourth consecutive regional title with a 65-57 victory over the fourth-seeded Blue Devils at the Augusta Civic Center.
“You’ve really got to look inside yourself and figure out what’s going on around you and stay the course,” said Hampden junior forward Conar Moore of the game’s dramatic turnaround.
“We realized we got punched in the face right there, and we weren’t going to take it.”
Hampden (19-2) will seek its second state championship in three years next Saturday night in a rematch against Western A champion Portland, also in Augusta. Portland (19-2) defeated the Broncos 54-40 in last year’s final.
Lewiston, which sought its first regional crown since 1966, finishes at 13-8.
Junior guard Nick Gilpin paced Hampden to its 13th consecutive victory at the ACC — a streak that dates back to the 2011 EM semifinals — as he scored on a dunk off the game’s opening tip and went on to total 23 points, eight rebounds and seven assists.
Brendan McIntyre added 17 points and seven rebounds for the Broncos while Moore added 10 points, five during the fourth quarter.
But the two most important baskets of the game may have been back-to-back 3-pointers less than a minute apart by junior guard Jake Black midway through the third quarter after Lewiston had turned the game into a one-sided track meet just before and after intermission to transform a 35-27 deficit into a stunning 48-35 lead.
“I wasn’t worried about the score,” said Gilpin, who was named the tournament’s outstanding player-sportsman. “I was worried about how we couldn’t even get a shot off because they were creating so many turnovers, and if we couldn’t get shots off we couldn’t score enough points to win the game.”
But Black’s first long-range shot ended Lewiston’s long scoring binge, and the second then closed Hampden’s deficit to 48-41 and served to reinforce the Broncos’ belief that they had withstood the Blue Devils’ best body blow.
“I think it was Jake’s shots, honestly, that got us going,” said McIntyre. “We were down 13 at that point, and once he hit those two threes it really got the momentum going, they kind of laid back a little bit and we got everything back.”
By the end of the third quarter Hampden had closed within 48-46, and a reverse layup by Moore around 6-foot-10-inch Lewiston center Trever Irish followed by a mid-range jumper by Moore gave the Broncos a sudden 50-48 lead before Isaiah Harris finally countered for the Blue Devils to tie the game with 5:37 remaining.
Quintarian Brown’s step-back jumper gave Lewiston what turned out to be its last lead at 52-50 before Gilpin went to the basket for a three-point play and McIntyre followed with a reverse layup, again using the rim to protect the ball against the omnipresent Irish.
Hampden sealed the game at the free-throw line, making 8 of 10 attempts over the final three minutes.
“You know they’re going to make a run and we held them off for a while,” said Lewiston coach Tim Farrar, “They stopped turning it over and locked down in the halfcourt and that made it tough for us.”
Harris led Lewiston with 19 points and eight rebounds while Irish had 12 points and 12 boards. Tykeem Gaines also scored 12 points and Ryan Bell added 10 for the Blue Devils.
