By Mike Lowe, Special to the BDN
Bangor High School’s boys basketball season ended Friday night, an 82-39 loss to Cheverus in the Class AA North quarterfinals in Portland, a game that perfectly symbolized the Rams season.
Second-ranked Cheverus scored the game’s first 12 points en route to a 30-point first-quarter lead that the seventh-ranked Rams could barely dent the rest of the way.
“Similar to a lot of our games this year,” said Bangor Coach Brad Libby. “We came out slow, threw the ball around a little bit, had some turnovers. That’s a great team that plays with a lot of intensity and you can’t do that.
“But we didn’t quit. We battled. That’s been our M.O. this year. We get down and then we battle back.”
Bangor ended its season 1-18, its lone victory coming on Jan. 9, a 64-57 decision over rival Brewer.
The Stags (16-3) will play third-ranked Portland (15-4) in the regional semifinals Thursday at 2 p.m. at the Cross Insurance Arena. Cheverus defeated Bangor twice in the regular season, 65-51 at Bangor on Jan. 6 and 75-38 on Feb. 2 in Portland.
This game was very similar to the second. Cheverus used its intense defense to force 11 turnovers in the first quarter and, after Kadin Thomas scored on a short jumper to stop the Stags’ opening run, ran off the final 20 points of the first to lead 32-2.
“We always want to do that,” said Cheverus coach Richie Ashley. “Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But the guys were ready to play for a lot of reasons tonight. We came out and played really hard.
“We didn’t want a team that, on paper we were better than, hang around. You never know what can happen. So we came out hard.”
Inside and outside, Cheverus punished the Rams in the opening quarter. The Stags dominated the rebounding and used a harassing defense to lead to many easy baskets.
After that, it was a matter of Bangor settling in and fighting back. Cheverus only out-scored the Rams by two in the second quarter and 11 in the second half.
“I feel like a lot of times this year we would find ourselves down in the first quarter or the first half,” said Bangor senior forward Ryan Ford, who led the Rams with eight points. “And then it was all about not giving up. We wanted to play with a lot of pride no matter what the score was.
“I know the season wasn’t what we wanted it to be. But we tried to make the best of it for sure.”
Gio St. Onge led Cheverus with 19 points while Leo McNabb had 14, Rocco Depatsy 13, and Nicola Plalum and Quintin Eason 11 each. Bangor received six points each from Liam Vigue and Thomas.