BANGOR – Hold an opponent to 26 points in the Bangor Auditorium this time of year and one would expect to be kicked back and relaxing on the bench by no later than the midway point in the fourth quarter.
But then, one would not be an Oxford Hills player, coach or green-and-gold wearing fan.
Sweating it out to the end, the second-seeded Vikings eventually held on for a grinding 30-26 win over No. 7 Cony on Saturday in the Eastern A quarterfinals.
Oxford Hills moves on to the semifinals to face No. 6 Gardiner, which upset No. 3 Brunswick on Friday. With Bangor losing to Hampden yesterday, the Vikings are now the top seed remaining in the tournament.
“We really did a nice job to hold them to 26 points,” said Vikings coach Scott Graffam. “The last two times we played them, they scored 66 and 64.”
Cony had handed the Vikings (16-3) two of their four regular-season losses in the last two years. The difference yesterday was that the Vikes shut down Cony senior Doug Joerss (five points, 10 rebounds), who had scored 22 in each of those previous games.
“I was very proud of the way we played defense,” Graffam said. “Joerss has lit us up twice in a row and we wanted to make sure that he didn’t kill us tonight.”
Josh Powell guarded Joerss in the first half and held him to two points. Corey Saunders took over when Powell got into foul trouble early in the third quarter and, with a brief assist from Thomas Kothe, limited the all-conference forward to three points in the second half. The trio denied and fronted Joerss any time he was on the strong side and got plenty of help from teammates who collapsed on him whenever he got the ball in the low block or drove into the paint.
“During practice, we practiced making sure the person who was guarding him front-sided him,” Saunders said, “and if he did touch the ball inside, then make sure we were doubling down.”
“We’ve faced that since Christmas, people hanging and grabbing and all over him. Usually more than one person,” said Cony coach Bruce Hunt. “We asked our other kids to step up a bit for us because we knew that was going to happen and I thought the other kids did a great job of knocking down some shots.”
Cony (12-8) got some 3-pointers from brothers Eric and Brian Lui and Chris Carville to help keep the game close. Carville and Eric Lui led the Rams with seven points apiece, but Cony ended up shooting just 24 percent as a team.
Oxford Hills didn’t fare much better from the floor, shooting 28 percent, including 3-for-18 from 3-point territory.
“We couldn’t shoot the ball any worse than that. Of course, that says something about their defense I think. That’s a good defensive team,” Graffam said.
Matt McDonnell finished with eight points to lead the Vikings, while Kothe and Kelvin Decato added five apiece.
The Vikings nursed a two-point halftime lead into an eight-point margin in the third quarter on jumpers from Thomas Kothe and McDonnell and a trey by Decato. Cony battled back to within two on back-to-back 3s by the Lui brothers to close the quarter.
The two teams combined for eight points in the fourth quarter. Joerss scored his lone field goal of the second half two minutes into the fourth to tie it. Saunders answered with a hoop and a nice give-and-go by Leif and Thomas Kothe that made it 29-25 proved to be the last field goal of the contest.
Carville pulled the Rams within a possession with a free throw with 2:50 to go. The Vikings had a couple of chances to ice it from the charity stripe, but Saunders missed the front end of a 1-and-1, then missed two more after Cony was called for an intentional foul.
McDonnell missed his own 1-and-1, giving the Rams one last chance to tie it, but Eric Lui missed a 3-pointer with 25 seconds left. Saunders then made the front end of a 1-and-1 to make it a two possession game with 22.8 seconds to go, and when Joerss and Carville both missed 3s in the closing seconds, it was finally time for Oxford Hills to heave a huge sigh of relief.
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