BREWER, Maine — The Brewer High School girls basketball team rattled off the first 11 points of the second half to build a 23-8 lead and withstood a determined 17-point surge by junior guard Brianna Townsend to beat the Nokomis High School Warriors 35-29 in a Class A North play-in game Tuesday night.
Eighth seed Brewer, now 6-13, will take on top seed Skowhegan at 8:30 p.m. Friday at the Augusta Civic Center in a quarterfinal.
No. 9 Nokomis wound up 1-18.
Senior guard Jordan Doak’s 12 points paced the Witches. She also had four steals and three rebounds. Sophomore guard Mariah Roberts contributed six points, eight rebounds and two steals. Senior Trea Broussard had four points, six rebounds and two steals. Riley Umel and Kaylee Dore came off the bench and scored four points apiece.
Townsend finished with a game-high 20 points for Nokomis. Her 12 rebounds and four steals were also game-highs.
Townsend scored her team’s first 17 points in the second half before fouling out with 1:12 remaining in the game.
Sophomore Addison Hawthorne came off the bench and scored five points and she also had three rebounds. Sophomore Sydney King pulled down seven rebounds and freshman Eliya Drummond corralled five rebounds.
The two teams combined to shoot 28.6 percent from the floor as Brewer shot 29.6 percent (13-for-44) and Nokomis shot 27.3 percent (9-for-33).
“It obviously wasn’t a [high] scoring game by any means,” said Brewer coach Chris Horr. “Shots were hard to come by. We got the looks we wanted. We just didn’t shoot very well.”
Horr added that he was proud of how the team played defensively.
“The Townsend girl is an all-conference player for sure. It doesn’t take much space for her to get off a shot. But I thought we did a good job containing her. We made her work quite a bit. We tried to dog her up the court and make her work 82 feet.”
Doak was responsible for guarding her most of the time.
“She’s a very good player. I just tried to make her go left as much as I could because that’s her less dominant hand,” Doak said. “I tried not to give her much space to shoot.”
Brewer was leading 12-8 at halftime but broke the game open by reeling off the first 11 points of the second half.
Roberts and Broussard started the run with jumpers from the corner before Doak’s steal and layup made it 18-8.
Jenna McQuarrie sank a free throw and two more steals led to baskets as Allie Flagg converted her own steal before Roberts stole the ball and passed it to Flagg for another layup.
Townsend finally provided the Warriors with their first points of the quarter with 1:30 remaining by finishing her own steal with a jump shot and she added two free throws to close the gap to 23-12 entering the fourth quarter.
She then continued her run of eight straight points with a runner in the lane and a layup after she grabbed a loose ball to make it 23-16 with seven minutes remaining.
It was still a seven-point game when Umel came off the bench and nailed a three with her first shot of the game with 5:18 to go.
“That was big because points were so hard to come by,” Horr said.
Nokomis couldn’t get any closer than eight until they scored consecutive baskets to make it 34-29 with 8.6 seconds remaining. Doak added a free throw with 7.1 seconds left to produce the final scoreline.
The Brewer girls looked like they were going to make short work of the Warriors, jumping out to a 6-0 lead while the Warriors missed their first six shots and turned the ball over six times.
Brewer held Nokomis scoreless until Townsend hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key with 50 seconds left in the first period.
Kaylee Dore’s three and her foul shot made it 10-3 with 4:52 left in the half but the Warriors outscored their hosts 5-2 the rest of the half to pull within 12-8 at the intermission.
The two teams shot a combined 17.9 percent from the floor in the first half.