Hawks upend Eagles in semi Defense, rebounding key win

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BANGOR – It might not be the most stylish way to win basketball games, but until they start giving out style points, the Hermon Hawks aren’t too worried about how they look.

The No. 7 Hawks continued another run to the Eastern Maine Class B finals from a low seed position with a 48-38 semifinal victory over No. 6 Ellsworth at the Bangor Auditorium Wednesday afternoon.

The 12-8 defending Eastern champs return to Saturday afternoon’s championship game (approximate 4 p.m. start) and await the winner of Wednesday night’s Camden Hills-Maine Central Institute winner.

It was another Hermon win keyed by defense and rebounding.

“You know what our keys are: Take care of the ball, play good defense, and box out,” said second-year Hawks coach and Hermon alumnus Rick Sinclair. “We knew coming in we didn’t have to do anything special on defense because we matched up well with them, so we just had to do those three things as best we could for 32 minutes.”

Unfortunately for the Eagles, the same didn’t apply for them as they couldn’t find a way to slow down Hermon star Ryan Garland.

After a cold opening quarter, Garland was nearly unstoppable as he hit shots from all over the court, falling down, with hands in his face, on the run … You name it.

“We didn’t really have anyone to match up with him,” said Eagles coach Dan Clifford. “The guys we put on him did a good job, but he was hitting some tough ones from all over the place. It was his day.”

The 6-foot-4 senior forward scored Hermon’s final 19 points en route to a game-high 26. Garland also hit all five of his free throws to improve to 18-for-18 from the line in the tournament.

“That’s all the coaching staff. We shoot 40, 50 shots every day in practice so we’re bound to get better,” he said.

Garland’s late offensive onslaught wrested the lead away from Ellsworth for good after the Eagles took a 30-29 lead with 2:06 left in the third.

On defense, Hermon’s flypaper style of man-to-man defense gummed up the Eagles fast break attack and allowed very few open shots. Garland and Joey Schacht held mercurial Eagles guard Steve DeWitt to four points while Hermon’s Jason Ouellette stuck to Derek Awalt, who shot just 29.4 percent en route to 10 points.

Many of the errant shots the Eagles did manage to get off wound up in Ron Lane’s hands. Hermon’s sophomore forward grabbed 15 rebounds to go with 13 points, but he thought he could do better.

“I didn’t think I had that many,” said the 6-4 Lane. “I thought I was a little shaky.”

Ellsworth forwards Joe Richards and John Morse each had 12 points and six rebounds. Awalt had nine rebounds and five assists.

Hawks 48, Eagles 38

Hermon boys (13-8) Ellsworth (11-10)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG F AF TP

Schacht 0 3 0 1 0 Richards 5 9 12

Garland 9 17 5 5 26 King 0 0 0 0

Watson 0 1 0 2 0 Bradford 0 2 0

Shaw 1 4 0 0 2 DeWitt 2 9 0 4

Lane 4 12 5 8 13 Murray 0 0 0 0

Ouellette 3 3 0 0 7 A.Smith 0 0 0

Moulton 0 0 0 0 0 Awalt 5 17 0 10

Kenney 0 1 0 0 0 Joc.Morse 0 0 0

Sawyer 0 0 0 0

Joh.Morse 5 12 12

Boles 0 1 0 0

Totals 17 41 10 16 48 Totals 17 50 4 38

Hermon 7 20 34 48

Ellsworth 12 20 32 38

3-pt. goals: Hermon (4-8): Garland 3-6, Ouellette 1-1, Lane 0-1; Ellsworth (0-6): Awalt 0-1, Morse 0-1, DeWitt 0-2, Bradford 0-2