BREWER – Things couldn’t have looked worse for the Brewer Witches four minutes into Friday night’s Class A boys basketball matchup against Messalonskee of Oakland.

The Eagles had jumped out to a 12-0 lead, making three early 3-point goals while Brewer missed its first eight shots of any type.

The Witches were down, but not out.

“We knew we just had to stay with what we’d been working on in practice all week,” said senior guard Brad Libby. “We knew we’d finally hit shots. We weren’t making them at the beginning of the game, but we knew that they’d drop in.”

Perhaps the Witches were just saving their energy for overtime – two of them, in fact – as Brewer rallied from that early deficit behind senior center Ryan Babin for a stunning 58-54 victory.

Babin, who with Libby and guard Rick Adams are the only seniors on the young Brewer roster, dominated this game after intermission, capitalizing on a foul-plagued Messalonskee frontcourt to finish with 29 points – including 15 of 17 from the free-throw line.

He had just two points at halftime, but Brewer continually fed its big man during the second half and overtime periods. And when his teammates didn’t feed him, Babin got the ball by attacking the offensive glass.

“Ryan just had a really gutsy performance and did a great job of leading tonight,” said Brewer coach Mark Reed. “When you’ve got guys who lead and play that hard, it energizes everybody and really does tremendous things for the team that don’t show up in the scorebook.”

Brewer (8-8) rallied within within 21-13 by intermission as Libby scored seven first-half points.

Then Babin took over offensively, challenging the taller Messalonskee front line. He singularly outscored the Eagles 8-1 in the third quarter as Brewer took a 25-22 lead, then added seven points in the fourth quarter as the Witches built a five-point edge.

But Messalonskee guard Matt Natole, who scored just three points in the game’s first 30 minutes, hit three 3-pointers in the final two minutes of regulation, including one from NBA range with 29 seconds left that sent the teams into overtime tied at 39-39.

Natole made two more 3-pointers in overtime as Messalonskee built a 45-41 lead. But Natole and center Eric Taylor fouled out and Brewer rallied from the line, with Babin making two after grabbing an offensive rebound with 7.7 seconds left to forge a 47-47 tie and force a second extra period.

“Every time we came back we got a new adrenaline rush,” said Libby. “Every time we made a shot we were just pumped, and our crowd helped us a lot tonight. Their cheering was like the sixth man.”

Brewer never trailed in the second overtime after Babin took a pass from Ben Valley and converted a three-point play to give the Witches a 50-47 lead. Sophomore Coby Hutchins added four free throws and a key steal in the final 1:06 to help Brewer preserve its most satisfying victory of the season.

“I thought my kids were very, very tough tonight in terms of their mental effort,” said Reed. “We made some mistakes, and that’s going to happen, but we didn’t let the mistakes get to us, we just got on to the next play. I thought our kids did a good job of doing things that were game-necessary but that maybe we don’t talk about all the time.”

That included inducing fouls from Messalonskee while not fouling the perimeter-oriented Eagles. Brewer made 26 of 38 free throws compared to 5 of 9 for Messalonskee.

“Some of their big players got into foul trouble early,” said Babin, “so we wanted to take advantage of that by running our offense where we post up our big guys and our guards like we did tonight. We did that, and we drew some fouls.”

Messalonskee (11-5) nearly overcame that free-throw deficit from long range, as the Eagles made 11 of 20 3-point tries. Natole made 6 of 7 en route to a team-high 20 points, while Nick Ouellette made 4 of 7 and scored 14 points.

WITCHES 58, EAGLES 54 (2 OT)

Messalonskee (11-5) Brewer (8-8)

Player G AG F AF TP Player G AG AF TP

Berndt 0 1 0 0 0 Bessette 1 3

Brann 0 0 0 0 0 Libby 6 13 15

Pelletier 1 2 0 1 2 Adams 0 2 1

Bernier 3 7 3 3 9 Meeker 0 0 0

Haggan 0 0 0 0 0 Hutchins 1 6

Htchnson 0 1 0 0 0 Valley 1 4 4

Gilbert 0 3 0 0 0 Babin 7 18 15 17 29

Natole 7 9 0 0 20 Belote 0 0 0

Hash 1 1 0 0 2

Ouellette 5 11 0 0 14

Dubois 0 0 0 0 0

Holmes 2 5 1 3 6

Taylor 0 3 1 2 1

Totals 19 43 5 9 54 Totals 16 44 26 38 58

Messalonskee 12 21 22 39 47 54

Brewer 3 13 25 39 47 58

3-pt. goals – Messalonskee (11-20): Natole 6-7, Ouellette 4-7, Holmes 1-2, Pelletier 0-1, Gilbert 0-1, Bernier 0-2; Brewer (0-12): Bessette 0-1, Adams 0-1, Valley 0-1, Hutchins 0-2, Libby 0-3, Babin 0-4

JV: Brewer 45-43

Attendance: 350 (est.)