Calais, Hawks in wins> Blue Devils face Hodgdon tonight

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BANGOR – Basketball fans can look at some box scores and see “BLOWOUT” written in one bold number.

Friday’s number: 90.

That’s how many field goal attempts the Narraguagus girls took against Hodgdon in their Class D girls semifinal.

That, for the unitiated, is approximately the number of field goal attempts the last USA Dream Team would have racked up against Team Botswana in an Olympic mismatch.

And here’s your tourney week lesson in new math: On Friday, 90 wasn’t enough.

The youthful Hodgdon Hawks were thoroughly harrassed by the Narraguagus press and gave the ball back to the the Knights 33 times. They allowed 90 attempts while taking 44. And they won, 51-48.

The Hawks earned coach Phil Faulkner a berth in his first Eastern Maine girls final, after leading the Katahdin boys to six EM and two state titles in his career. He resurfaced at Hodgdon this year after three years in “retirement.”

The No. 7 Hawks (13-7) will face the No. 1 Calais at 7:05 p.m. Saturday. The Blue Devils topped No. 4 Schenck of East Millinocket (10-10) 43-38 in the day’s other semifinal.

Hodgdon got 19 points from sophomore star Holly Quint, took the lead for good on a 13-footer from her junior sister Amanda with 42 seconds to play, and stunned the No. 3 Knights of Harrington.

“[Our coaches] said `pass, pass, pass [against the press], but it didn’t seem to be going our way,” Amanda Quint said. “We dribbled more than we should have, and we weren’t looking to run.”

But when Narraguagus got the ball, they struggled against a Hawks zone defense that virtually dared them to attack from the outside.

The result was some close quarters for the Narraguagus inside players, who got very few looks at the hoop that didn’t include two or three blue shirts.

They managed to connect on just 22 of their 90 shots (24 percent).

“That’s the way it is when you come to Bangor,” Narraguagus coach Marie Smith said. “You just have to take that chance and hope and pray that your [shots] are falling and theirs aren’t falling.”

Adding to their difficulty was the absence of senior point guard Heather Knapp. Knapp injured her right knee with 51 seconds to go in the first quarter, sat out the second quarter, and came back in the second half to play just 57 seconds before reaggravating the injury.

The Hawks got seven points and 18 rebounds in a massive effort from freshman forward Amy Wallace, while classmate Danielle Fitzpatrick contributed 11 points and five boards. Amanda Quint finished with 10 points and eight rebounds.

The Knights (14-4) were paced by the play of junior forward Melissa Meserve, who scored 16 points and grabbed 12 rebounds. Holly Strout added 19 points and nine rebounds.

” We won some games we shouldn’t. We lost some games we shouldn’t,” Faulkner said. “But that’s because we’re a young team. I don’t know what to say. I’m just so pleased.”

In the evening semifinal, the two dominant Class C girls teams of the decade faced off yet again, with Calais pulling out the win behind the fourth-quarter surge of 6-foot senior Kristen Gower.

Gower scored seven of her 10 points over the final 4:53 to lead the 17-3 Blue Devils.

The fact that the Blue Devils and Wolverines met in the tournament surprised no one: the last time a team other than Calais or Schenck of East Millinocket represented Class C in a state final, this year’s seniors were The year was 1990, and that was just a one-year speed bump. You have to go back to 1986 for the next occasion.

“I didn’t think it would happen this year,” Calais coach Bob McShane said of making it back to the EM final. “I said this summer that if we made it to the semifinals, that would be the 11th straight year that we made it to the final four. I thought that would be a great accomplishment.

“They just keep amazing me and pushing it to another level.”

Among the most amazing was Gower, who shook off a sub-par tourney with a stellar five minutes that turned the tide. She also finished with nine rebounds.

Twice Gower went hard to the boards and converted offensive rebounds. The first hoop made it 36-33 Calais with 1:28 to go. The second was a back-breaker, giving the Devils a 39-35 edge with 36 seconds to go.

Add in 5-10 junior Rachel Clark (13 points, 12 rebounds), and the Devils had a potent 1-2 punch.

“We split on the season, so we knew it wasn’t going to be easy,” Clark said. “We were just going to play our hardest, and we got it.”

Still, the Wolverines hung tough behind the nine-point, nine-rebound effort of Erica Franck. Six-footer Rachel Larlee grabbed nine boards despite foul trouble.

Blue Devils 43, Wolverines 38

Schenck girls (10-10) Calais (17-3)

Name G AG F AF TP Name G AG F AF TP

Johnston 2 8 0 2 5 J. Clark 1 8 4 6 6

Nic. Brown 0 0 0 0 0 Goodine 1 4 2 2 4

Wyman 3 8 0 1 7 B. Churchill 2 6 0 0 4

Glidden 2 6 0 0 4 Redding 0 1 0 0 0

Franck 4 7 0 0 9 DeWitt 0 1 0 0 0

Birt 2 8 0 0 5 Francis 0 3 1 2 1

Nik. Brown 1 1 0 0 2 R. Clark 5 20 3 6 13

Larlee 3 10 0 0 6 Gower 4 11 2 6 10

Boone 0 0 0 0 0 Crossman 2 5 1 4 5

Ludington 0 0 0 0 0

Totals 17 48 0 3 38 Totals 15 59 13 26 43

Schenck 8 18 27 38

Calais 6 19 27 43

3-pt. goals: Schenck (4-13): Johnston 1-1, Wyman 1-5, Franck 1-2, Birt 1-5; Calais (0-11): J. Clark 0-5, B. Churchill 0-2, Redding 0-1, DeWitt 0-1, Francis 0-2

Hawks 51, Knights 48

Hodgdon girls (13-7) Narraguagus (14-4)

Name G AG F AF TP Name G AG F AF TP

Fitzpatrick 5 7 1 6 11 Knapp 0 3 0 2 0

Aldrich 1 3 0 0 2 Skinner 2 9 1 2 5

Chabot 1 2 0 2 2 Meserve 8 20 0 0 16

Wallace 2 7 3 6 7 Wallace 1 13 0 0 2

H. Quint 4 16 9 12 19 Caler 0 1 0 0 0

A. Quint 4 9 2 2 10 Strout 8 17 2 4 19

Morse 0 11 0 0 0

Portrie 2 9 0 3 4

Howe 1 7 0 0 2

Totals 17 44 15 28 51 Totals 22 90 3 11 48

Hodgdon 4 20 39 51

Narraguagus 4 15 29 48

3-pt. goals: Hodgdon (2-5): Aldrich 0-1, H. Quint 2-4; Narraguagus (1-2): Skinner 0-1, Strout 1-1