The John Bapst girls basketball team is one win away from claiming the program’s best regular-season finish since the Maine Principals’ Association first began sponsoring a girls basketball tournament in 1975.

Should the Crusaders of Bangor beat Caribou Friday, Bapst would finish the Eastern Maine Class B regular season with a 17-1 record, bettering a 16-2 mark in 1991 when they were in Eastern Maine Class C. The team’s only one-loss regular-season came in 1981, when Bapst went 14-1 in Class D and eventually won the state championship.

John Bapst’s latest win came Monday against Mount Desert Island, a 37-35 victory that was its 16th win in a row. The Crusaders opened the season with a 50-45 loss to defending Class B state champion Presque Isle, the same team that beat the Crusaders in the Eastern Maine Class B final last year.

They haven’t lost since that Dec. 9 game and avenged that loss with a 50-44 victory over Presque Isle on Jan. 6.

Caribou is just 1-15, but the Crusaders managed just a 25-22 victory on Dec. 27.

“I think we’ve been working together a lot better,” said Bapst senior Lauren Nichols, a 5-foot-11 forward. “As the season’s gone on our teamwork has been a lot better.”

Keeping control of a game’s pace has been among the keys to the streak. The Crusaders play a deliberate, patient offense that suits its inside duo of Nichols and 5-11 junior center Hillary Laferriere and try not to be lured into a running, up-and-down style favored by most of their opponents.

“We play our own game and not try to do what the other team wants,” Laferriere said.

That’s easier said than done sometimes, especially because the Crusaders occasionally hear the “boring, boring” chants from the fans.

The Bapst players try not to let it get to them.

“A lot of times when we go four corners the fans go crazy and they start to yell,” Nichols said. “But we’re the ones who score off of it.”

As a result, the Crusaders don’t score a ton of points. But they also don’t give up many – only about 35 points per game during their winning streak.

Guard Eve Jordan contributed 10 points in Monday’s win, which proved to be important as Nichols and Laferriere managed just 12 and 10, respectively. Offensive contributions from other players have been important in the run, too.

“We don’t always have to rely on the inside [game],” Laferriere said. “When you have two games, instead of just inside or out, it works a lot better.”

Collinsworth heading to MMA

Another of Eastern Maine’s top schoolgirl basketball players will join the ranks at Maine Maritime Academy next fall.

Stearns of Millinocket guard Amy Collinsworth said she will attend the Castine school and play for coach Craig Dagan’s Mariners.

Collinsworth plans to join the Regiment of Midshipmen, which makes up about 55 percent of MMA’s student population according to the school Web site. She is the third member of her family to attend Maine Maritime and would likely have gone there even if basketball wasn’t a factor.

But it is, and the fact that MMA has become one of the nation’s top NCAA Division III programs is a big lure.

“I’ve been reading up on them,” Collinsworth said. “I know they’re ranked [in the top 25 of the national polls] and their defense is in the top 10 nationally and they’ve been to the NCAAs.”

Collinsworth, who is more of a defensive-minded guard for the Minutemen than a scorer, said Dagan foresees her in the same role at the college level.

“That was a lot of pressure taken off of me,” she said. “[Dagan said] when I get older he’ll work with me more on scoring.”

Collinsworth also wants to play softball at MMA. She plays field hockey for Stearns, but Maine Maritime doesn’t offer that sport in the fall and Collinsworth said she would have sat out the fall season anyway.

Jessica Bloch can be reached at 990-8193, 1-800-310-8600 or jbloch@bangordailynews.net.