Dick Morse said he and his Bangor High School Rams didn’t play up to expectations that day. The result was a 24-17 loss to the Cheverus High School Stags in their state Class A championship basketball game at the Brewer Auditorium.

It was 1940.

They will meet for the third time on Saturday at the Bangor Auditorium. Cheverus also won in 1948, 35-34.

Morse, who returned to his native Bangor two years ago, saw the Rams beat Lawrence of Fairfield and Nokomis of Newport in their recent quarterfinals and semis, respectively.

The 80-something Morse missed the EM title victory over Brunswick. He had intended to watch it on TV, “but I fell asleep.”

Morse said he used to have vivid memories of the 1940 state championship game. His memory isn’t as sharp as it once was, he said, but he still remembers the game well.

“We had a very good team. And we had an excellent season. We just didn’t click that day. We didn’t play a particularly good game. The air came out of our bubble. A lot of times, teams and athletes have a letdown. We had won the Eastern Maine championship on a last-second shot,” recalled Morse, the Rams’ captain.

What Morse neglected to say was that he was the one who nailed the shot in the Eastern Maine title game, rebounding Windy Work’s miss and putting it home for the 24-22 overtime triumph over Presque Isle.

But there were no such heroics against the Portland-based Stags.

“I left my game in the locker room or at home. It was a bad day at Black Rock,” said Morse.

However, he also acknowledged that they lost to a “very good” Cheverus team.

He said the Brewer Auditorium was packed and it was a “thrill” to play in a state game.

He said high school basketball has changed a great deal in 63 years.

“It’s 180 degrees different,” said Morse. “They move the ball much quicker. It’s perpetual motion out there. Our game was much more deliberate. The guard bringing the ball down the court did so very, very slowly. It wasn’t nearly as complicated.”

He added that they played both zone and man-to-man defense, but teams didn’t employ full- or half-court presses. There was no 3-point arc.

However, Morse did play a much faster tempo in college. He received a full athletic scholarship to Rhode Island State [now the University of Rhode Island] from coach Frank Keaney, who believed in trying to score “a point a minute.”

Morse eventually attended Maine Maritime Academy and joined the Navy. He served in the South Pacific during WWII.

He has been impressed by the current Bangor team.

“They don’t have a great deal of height. But they’ve got spirit and they’re well-coached. It isn’t a singularly one-man team. People write a lot about Zak Ray. He’s a great player. He’s the pilot. But they have four other guys who are very good, too. They’re all excellent shooters,” said Morse.

He said the atmosphere at the tournament games is comparable to 1940.

“We had great support from the student body like they do now. And we had cheerleaders, although they weren’t as acrobatic as the ones they have now. The ones today could be [acrobats] in a circus. We had a band. The Bangor fight song had just been written,” recalled Morse, who will be cheering on his alma mater on Saturday.

Larry Mahoney can be reached at 990-8231, 1-800-310-8600 or by e-mail at lmahoney@bangordailynews.net.