AUGUSTA, Maine — Carl Parker had seen it before and knew what was coming, but there was little the Bangor boys basketball coach and his players could do to stop Andrew Fleming on Thursday night.
The 6-foot-7 senior forward, bound for the University of Maine in the fall, scored 42 points and grabbed 12 rebounds as third-ranked Oxford Hills rolled to a 71-47 victory over the sixth-seeded Rams in their Class AA North quarterfinal at the Augusta Civic Center.
“What you hope to do is to make him take some tough shots, hope he misses a few, hope you hit a few,” said Parker, whose team yielded 111 points to Fleming in three meetings this winter. “He’s a great player. Maine’s going to be real lucky to get him.”
Oxford Hills (15-4) advances to a semifinal meeting Tuesday against No. 2 Deering (16-2) of Portland, while Bangor ended its season at 5-14.
A late-season win by Bangor at Oxford Hills helped the Rams earn their bid to the state’s first Class AA tournament, but that merely provided the Vikings motivation for the return match.
“I was really nervous coming into this game because of what happened during the regular season,” said Oxford Hills coach Scott Graffam. “I had an idea we were going to play better because we didn’t play well either time, but that was because of them, they defended us well.
“We really worked hard on getting Andrew the ball where he needed to get it, and in the first half he played like a man possessed.”
Fleming had 24 points and eight rebounds in the first two quarters alone as Oxford Hills built a 35-20 lead, then added 11 points in the third quarter.
Bangor hung within 53-36 entering the final period largely behind the determined play of senior point guard Ethan Dorman before Fleming went Showtime on the Rams — opening the fourth quarter with a driving three-point play, a 3-point shot from the left of the key and an alley-oop slam dunk off a feed from Christian St. Pierre to provide the bulk of a 12-0 run that put the game away.
“Most of it came from the defensive end,” said Fleming, who surpassed 500 points for his senior season with the performance and holds his school’s single-season and career scoring records.
“We definitely turned them over and created out of that fast breaks and secondary breaks. We didn’t really play much in the halfcourt — we don’t really play very well in the halfcourt — so the fast break really helped us tonight.”
Fleming shot an efficient 15-of-25 from the field and 10-of-11 from the free-throw line.
“I think it was really just a team effort,” he said. “I was hitting my shots, but it was definitely everybody getting me right shots. Everyone on the team was seeing me in the right spots and just letting me create from there.”
Fleming’s younger brother, freshman Matthew Fleming, added 13 points and a game-high 14 rebounds for Oxford Hills.
Dorman paced Bangor with 16 points, 12 in the first half.
