The Gardiner Tigers held off a spirited second-half run by the Yarmouth Clippers to take home the Class B boys state basketball championship on Friday night.
Gardiner’s win capped off another year of the high school tournament at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, and finished things off for the Tigers in dream-like fashion.
The No. 3 team in Maine’s northern region held on in the fourth quarter to beat Yarmouth 58-54.
It was the Tiger boys first-ever basketball state championship.
“They’ve stayed with it. They’ve worked so hard,” Gardiner coach Aaron Toman said after the victory. “They’ve bought into the team-first mentality. I am just so happy for all of them, to be the first group in Gardiner boys basketball history, to ever do that. First gold ball, it’s tremendous. And it could not have happened to a better group of young men.”
Yarmouth, who escaped the southern bracket as the No. 4 seed, made a late push but Gardiner was able to do just enough down the stretch to secure the championship.
The Clippers closed in midway through the final period. A huge 3-pointer from Yarmouth sophomore forward Matthew LeBlanc cut the game to 46-42 around the 5-minute mark in the fourth.
Junior guard Trace Moody responded with two critical points in the lane for Gardiner, en route to a team-high 20 points on the night.
Yarmouth junior guard Owen Oranellas added another timely 3-pointer to cut the Gardiner lead to 48-47.
But Gardiner senior guard Brady Peacock was there with two buckets of his own to maintain a 54-47 cushion for the Tigers.
“To be the first team, it feels awesome,” Peacock said about the Tigers’ history-making win. “I’m just so proud of these boys. We work hard every day in practice, and it feels so good to bring this back to Gardiner for the first time.”
Yarmouth leading scorer Evan Oranellas provided several more baskets and totaled a game-high 22 on the night, but it wasn’t quite enough for the Clippers.
Though the Clippers were able to hold Gardiner senior forward Brady Atwater, the North regional tournament’s MVP, to a quiet night offensively after some early foul trouble, Moody and Peacock stepped up and made sure that Gardiner left Bangor with a championship.
“That’s who our team is. We’ve been in so many situations throughout the year, and throughout our tenure together, where we’ve been up big and a team makes a run and then we come back,” Toman said. “We’ve been down certain starters, certain guys in foul trouble, certain guys who are out due to injury. And it’s just a next-man-up mentality.”
Moody made several big free-throws to help close out the game Friday night.