BANGOR, Maine — It looked like the boys Class B North regional final was slipping away from Caribou Friday night.
And then Tristan Robbins and Landen Belanger stepped up for the Vikings and helped send them to the state championship game with a 41-40 win over the defending champion Orono Red Riots.
Robbins scored seven straight points in the fourth quarter, turning a 37-31 point lead for Orono into a 38-37 lead for Caribou. He added a critical basket with 54 seconds left to tie the game at 40.
But it was Belanger who sealed the win for Caribou with a free throw with .5 seconds left to play.
“That’s the toughest free throw he’ll ever shoot in his life, and he made it,” Caribou coach Kyle Corrigan said after the game.
“Landen’s cold-blooded, we’ve known that forever,” Corrigan added. “He’s a bigtime player, he’s a big shotmaker.”
The win for Caribou ends another strong season for Orono, which had won the previous two Class B state championships.
“I’m very proud of the effort we gave, but as I said to the guys, at the most crucial time in the game, they played better than we did,” Orono coach Ed Kohtala said afterward. “It’s just that simple.”
Kohtala said Caribou made the plays they needed to win down the stretch.
“I have so much admiration for Caribou and how they play, and they’re so well coached. So it’s not surprising that they made those plays right down at the end,” Kohtala added. “But I feel for our guys. Our team was very, very close, and they were a pleasure to coach. And you always want to get one more win.”
Robbins led all scorers with 17 points Friday night. Belanger had eight points in the win. Orono junior guard Bergen Soderberg led the Red Riots with 13 points, followed by senior Will Francis with 10.
Caribou moves on to play York in the Class B state final on Saturday, March 1 at 2:45 p.m. Caribou is the No. 1 seed in Class B North and York is the No. 2 seed in Class B South.
Corrigan said he was feeling good after the win, even though he didn’t think his Caribou team played their best basketball Friday night.
“I don’t think we played well offensively at all, we missed a lot of easy baskets tonight,” Corrigan said. “But you have to credit Orono’s defense. They’re physical, they had a great gameplan coming in.”
He also credited his team for battling back when down six points with four minutes to go in the fourth quarter. He said Robbins’ seven points in a row were “huge” for the Vikings late in the game.
“We just made plays at the end that we needed to make,” Corrigan said. “Really proud of them.”
Correction: A previous version of this story said that Caribou forward Tristan Robbins made a shot with 41.2 seconds left to play. That shot occurred with 54 seconds left. The story has also been updated to correct misspellings of the names of Caribou forward Landen Belanger and Robbins.