No. 2 Fort Kent survived a 38-36 victory over No. 7 George Stevens Academy in the final game of Monday’s tournament slate at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
The Warriors (15-4) will play No. 3 Dexter (17-2) on Thursday at 8:30 p.m.
Sol Lorio made a layup for George Stevens (14-6) and then with 28 seconds left Azaiah Nanson made a layup to cut the Fort Kent lead to 37-36.
Lorio finished with seven points.
Nanson had rebound after rebound and scored 16 points for George Stevens and was the target of the Eagles’ offense down the stretch.
Fort Kent missed three of four free throws in the final 28 seconds. With 10 seconds left, Lorio missed a 3-pointer while trailing 37-36 and Fort Kent’s Ethan Daigle grabbed the rebound. Daigle then hit a free throw with eight seconds left to put the Warriors ahead 38-36.
George Stevens had one last chance and on the final play, George Stevens coach Dwayne Carter was yelling to his players to “Get it to the big man.” Brady Pert brought the ball up and drove into the lane and put up a floater that bounced out, giving the Warriors the victory.
“The plan was to go inside and reverse the ball and go inside to try and get fouled,” Carter said of the offensive plan down the stretch. “We did go inside some but we took a couple shots that I wish we hadn’t taken, like the [second to] last shot. We didn’t need a three. We didn’t execute offensively that much. Their zone bothered us a little bit, we hadn’t played much against a zone and we had opportunities but we didn’t see some things we should have seen.”
The game was close throughout.
After Fort Kent took a 10-2 lead at the start of the game, George Stevens, on the back of five points from Nanson, tied the game up at 10 a piece.
The Warriors had a big second quarter, out-scoring the Eagles 16-4 thanks in part to nine points from Daigle. Daigle finished with 18 points.
After George Stevens outscored Fort Kent 6-1 in the third quarter, the Eagles trailed 27-20 with a period to go.
Hanging onto its postseason life, George Stevens got two quick baskets from Brockett Muir to make it 27-24.
Fort Kent made it a 37-32 lead with 1:14 left after two made free throws from Daigle.
“‘Don’t foul, let’s make sure we’re rebounding and we want to be in the passing lanes,’” Fort Kent coach Chad Cyr told his team down the stretch. “We had just gotten beat on the post and we wanted to get the ball in Daigle’s hands to get him on the free throw line because he’s our highest-percentage shooter.”
The Warriors fought off the Eagles in the end and never gave up the lead. They lived up to their mascot’s name.
“I’m always proud of those guys,” Cyr said. “We’ve done that all season long and have been in games that we probably shouldn’t have been in. GSA gets all the credit for being a good team and putting up a fight but we just live up to a Warrior mentality. We are the first on the floor and we just don’t ever give up. Thankfully we were on the winning side of it, it could have gone differently really fast.”