BANGOR, Maine — Senior guard Bryanne Crouse came off the bench and scored eight second-quarter points and junior forward Emi Higgins finished with a game-high 15 points as the seventh-seeded Hermon High School Hawks upset injury-riddled Mount Desert Island 49-39 in a Class B North girls basketball quarterfinal at the Cross Insurance Center Friday night.
Hermon improved to 12-8 and earned a date with No. 3 seed Presque Isle, 16-3, at 2:05 p.m. Wednesday. Second seed Mount Desert Island, which beat Hermon twice during the regular season, wound up 17-2. Its 39 points was a season-low.
Hermon used a 15-7 run in the second quarter behind Crouse’s eight points to build a 25-18 halftime lead and withstood a 6-0 run by the Trojans to open the fourth quarter that sliced the lead to 38-32.
“My role is to lead the team and see what the best option is to make a basket,” said Crouse, who sandwiched a pair of 3-pointers around two free throws during a 9-5 run to close out the half.
Higgins had six rebounds to go with her 15 points, and her basket underneath off a Lauren Plissey pass ended MDI’s 6-0 run with four minutes left to play.
Plissey had nine points and six rebounds; Crouse had four rebounds to go with her nine points; Allessa Oakes had six points and three assists; and Alex Allain had six points and five rebounds for Hermon.
The long-armed 6-foot Higgins also did an excellent job defending MDI leading scorer Kelsey Shaw, the only healthy MDI tri-captain after star point guard Sierra Tapley was lost to a knee injury early in the season and 5-10 forward Keely McConomy was sidelined by a broken finger suffered in practice Tuesday.
Shaw finished with 13 points, 13 rebounds and four steals, but she got in early foul trouble in the closely-officiated game and fouled out with 3:20 remaining, which ended MDI’s comeback hopes.
MDI was whistled for 28 fouls.
Maddy Candage had eight points and three assists for MDI, and Abbe Miller and Mariah Hamor had five points apiece.
“We played an amazing game. We had to shut Shaw down, and Emi played great man-to-man all night on her, and we got her in foul trouble,” said Crouse. “And not having McConomy was an advantage for us.”
“We shut her down pretty well,” said Higgins, who also had help from her teammates. “I took the ball at her to try to get her in foul trouble, and if she didn’t foul me, I kicked it out and trusted my teammates to make shots.”
“Hermon played real well and the injury bug finally caught up to us,” said MDI coach Brent Barker. “But our kids played with a lot of heart.”