The Hampden Academy girls basketball team on Tuesday evening put an exclamation point on a stretch of three games in four days.
The Broncos beat Messalonskee of Oakland on Saturday (36-31) and Gardiner (38-31) on Monday to all but sew up the top seed for the Class A North tournament. On Tuesday, defending regional champion Hampden parlayed smothering half-court defense, tenacious rebounding and senior Alydia Brillant’s game-high 17 points into a 53-41 victory over Class AA Bangor on Seniors Night at Hampden Academy.
It was 16-1 Hampden Academy’s eighth straight win and avenged its only loss, a 32-29 setback in Bangor on Jan. 7.
The 5-foot-10 Brillant, a guard-forward who is one of five seniors on the team, also hauled down seven rebounds. Freshman guard Bella McLaughlin scored 12 points and junior forward Megan Deans contributed eight points and a game-high 11 rebounds.
“We played real well. We executed what we wanted to do,” Deans said. “We wanted to attack the seams, get the ball into the post and kick it out.”
Emma Haskell came off the bench and hit two important 3-pointers for the Broncos and Amelia McLaughlin chipped in with four points and seven rebounds. Sydney Hodgdon had five points.
Libby Fleming registered 10 points and five rebounds to pace the Rams, who fell to 12-5 while having their six-game winning streak snapped. Rowan Andrews and Emi Streams each scored seven points and grabbed four rebounds and Abbie Quinn produced six points and four rebounds.
The Broncos outworked the Rams in the paint, outrebounding them 33-21. They also held Bangor to 32.6 percent shooting (15-for-46).
HA limited Bangor to just 12 points in the first half and led by as many as 16 before taking a 23-12 lead into the break.
“Any time you can hold a AA school to 12 points in a half, that’s real good,” Brillant said. “We’ve been working on that. We want to hold teams to less than 15 points in a half.”
Bangor scored the last eight points of the third period, including four free throws by Libby Fleming in the final 6.2 seconds to pull Bangor within four. The Rams cut it to three on Andrews’ runner with 5:58 left in the contest.
But the Broncos rattled off the next eight points and held the cold-shooting Rams scoreless for 3:01 to restore an 11-point lead and sew up the victory.
Brillant sank three free throws during the decisive run, Bella McLaughlin had a driving layup and a free throw and Deans converted a baseline layup off an Amelia McLaughlin feed.
The Broncos forced a slew of Bangor turnovers with their player-to-player pressure as the Rams threw the ball away on several occasions trying to get it inside to their post players.
“They put a lot of pressure on our ballhandlers and shut down our posts tonight,” said guard Andrews, Bangor’s only senior.
Brillant called her team’s performance amazing.
“We needed to work on boxing out and we did a better job of that. We kept them off the glass for the most part,” she said. “We hustled a lot, pushing the ball, which is something we worked on.”
“The fourth quarter has been a good quarter for us due to our conditioning and experience,” HA head coach Nick Winchester said.
The Broncos led all the way beginning with Hodgdon’s game-opening 3-pointer.
They used an 18-3 run spanning the first and second quarters to build a 23-7 lead before Libby Fleming’s basket and twin sister Abby Fleming’s 3-pointer closed out the half to close the deficit to 11.
“They pride themselves on how hard they play defense,” Bangor coach Jay Kemble said. “They took away our inside game. They did a really nice job.
“They’re an experienced, older team. They have good athletes. They had a couple possessions when they had four shots in a row because we didn’t get a rebound or didn’t get a body on them.”