PITTSFIELD – Brandon Tomah’s high school basketball career concluded in front of thousands of fans at the Bangor Auditorium and a statewide television audience.

It was an ending few players in Maine history could match – leading Calais High School to its second straight undefeated season and its second straight Class C state championship.

In many respects, Tomah’s basketball career now has reverted to its original formative stages. His games this winter are played in front of much smaller audiences – including many college coaches looking for the next big prize. And more important than games are the practices, as Tomah refines his skills in hopes of returning to the limelight in the collegiate ranks one day.

The Princeton native, a 6-foot-11/2 guard, is now one of the top reserves for the Lee Academy Postgraduate team. And while Lee and Calais aren’t that far apart geographically – perhaps 75 miles by car – they are worlds away in terms of team composition.

This year’s Lee team, 9-7 before a weekend tournament at the New York City Boys and Girls Club, has players from six different countries – Israel, Italy, Luxembourg, Australia, Canada and Croatia – and 10 different states.

Several players have Division I skills, led by Australian point guard Nate Tomlinson, who signed last month to accept a basketball scholarship from the University of Colorado. Others, like Tomah, are working on their games in search of the highest level.

It’s by battling those players in practice, as well as thriving in games against other prep school teams, that Tomah hopes to realize his own college basketball aspirations.

“It’s been great playing against good competition every day,” said Tomah, the lone Maine native on the Lee roster. “It’s a lot different from being in high school, because there are people from all over the place and you’re playing at a higher level every day so you’re going to get better. It’s been good for me.

“Being here has taught me that I can play with a lot of different guys, that I can play at a higher level. Nate’s already signed, and a lot of guys are getting D-I looks and I can play with those guys. It’s just that when I have an opportunity to go out and play against guys like that, I’ve got to go out and play well.”

Tomah is projected as a point guard in college because of his relative lack of height, so his ballhandling skills are one point of developmental emphasis this winter.

“He has to have more confidence handling the ball,” said Lee coach Carl Parker. “He’s a decent handler, but for some reason he doesn’t think he should dribble the ball much. He’s got to develop some confidence in that, because a lot of people are going to look at him as a point guard.

“But once they get him in they’ll see that playing combo guard won’t be bad for him because they’ll realize his toughness and the things he can do. He’s just a tough, hard-nosed kid. He doesn’t back down from anything. He always brings it every single night, and you’ve got to have kids like that who bring it every night.”

Parker and Tomah became familiar with each other in advance of their Lee Academy relationship, as Parker coached Tomah last spring and summer on an AAU team that finished 11th out of 153 teams in the 17-and-under division of the AAU National Championships in Orlando, Fla.

That’s the best-ever finish for a Maine team at the AAU junior nationals.

“It helped a lot,” said Tomah. “I went from playing high school basketball right to AAU with coach Parker. I knew his coaching style and what he wanted to do, so over the summer I worked on stuff he told me to work on, and when we went to the nationals we played against really good competition and did real well. We had a great team and had a great run down there, and that helped me a lot in making the transition to playing against this level of competition.”

And while Tomah works on the skills he hopes will lead to a college basketball scholarship, he also is staying true to those intangibles that helped him become a two-time Bangor Daily News All-Maine choice and a two-time Eastern Maine Class C tournament MVP.

“I obviously need to work on some things, but being here’s shown me that I can play with the higher-level guys that I thought I couldn’t play with before,” he said. “Next year I see myself as more of a combo guard, giving the [point guard] a break when he needs it but mostly running the wing and bringing a lot of intensity on the defensive end. That’s what my high school coach [Ed Leeman] preached a lot, so that’s pretty much what I want to bring to any program I get to.”

And where that will be?

Some Division I programs have inquired, as have a number of Division II and III teams, and there’s still plenty of time left until the NCAA’s late signing period next spring.

“Obviously everyone wants to go DI because that’s the highest level and you get to be on TV,” said Tomah, “but my ideal would be a great DII program. I’m obviously not going to turn down a DI, but if a good DII school were to offer me, I’d like to go to a good DII school because I know I could make an impact at that kind of a program.”