LEWISTON — The days of endless, two-victory winters are over for Lewiston boys’ basketball.

Now comes the agonizing, almost-there, learning-to-win phase, aptly and painfully demonstrated by Thursday night’s 53-47 overtime loss to Mt. Ararat.

Junior-dominated, eager and unselfish, the Blue Devils were only a few possessions away from being 8-1 or even 9-0 through the first half of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference campaign.

Lewiston (4-5) had Bangor, Skowhegan, Brewer and now Mt. Ararat all on the ropes — in the Eagles case, all but beaten — only to see it slip away.

“That’s four games in a row. It’s just that when we get the lead, we don’t protect the ball,” Lewiston coach Tim Farrar. “We seem to play better when we get behind. When we scored first in overtime, it was almost like, ‘Oh, no.’ “

Shawn Ricker scored that basket after an exchange of steals by Mt. Ararat’s Josh Wright and Lewiston’s Luke Cote, giving the Devils life after they bid farewell to a nine-point lead in the final 5:30 of regulation.

When Mt. Ararat lost star senior guard Josh Walker to a possible concussion on that same play, Lewiston might have been tempted even to lick its chops.

There was no smorgasbord, though. The Devils misfired on their final four field attempts. And while Walker paced the floor, exhorted his teammates and nearly gnawed a hole through the collar of his jersey after the trainer didn’t clear him to return, back stormed the Eagles.

Colin Swan nailed his second 3-pointer of the night to put Mt. Ararat (5-3) in front with 2:25 left.

Luke Liedman’s offensive rebound led to a traditional 3-point play with 59 seconds to go.

Following Lewiston’s miss of a 3-pointer and a Swan rebound, Wright sank two free throws to put it out of reach.

“Our whole team stepped up. To lose our best player, one of the top players in the conference, and come out on top says a lot about our team,” Mt. Ararat coach Aaron Watson said. “We’ve had a good soaking the last two games. We had a character win over Messalonskee, and this is another character win.”

Walker scored 12 of his game-high 20 points in the fourth quarter, rallying Mt. Ararat from a 40-31 deficit.

He scored eight unanswered points for the Eagles in a four-minute span. The would-be dagger was a spinning rainbow jumper from just inside the free-throw line to give Mt. Ararat a 44-42 edge with 1:34 left in the fourth.

“I’ll have to replay it later, but he just took over,” Farrar said. “He hit a couple of threes. One shot from behind his head. He’s a player.”

Two missed free throws and another fruitless possession threatened to spell doom for Lewiston in regulation. Ricker resuscitated the Devils with a steal and a feed to Joe McKinnon for the tying bank shot with 21 seconds to go.

With Lewiston blanketing Mt. Ararat’s two best outside threats, Wright missed a 3-pointer at the horn.

“I love that team,” Watson said of Lewiston. “They play so hard. That’s a good basketball team, and they’re not done. They’re going to win some more games.”

Liedman finished with 10 points, 10 rebounds and six steals for Mt. Ararat.

Abdi Osman and Jeff Turcotte topped Lewiston’s balanced attack with eight points each. McKinnon and Jake Dumas both added seven. Cote had six to go with four assists and four steals.

“It’s nice because nobody’s going to play triangle-and-two or box-and-one against us.” Farrar said. “But at the end of games, we don’t have that guy yet. Someone will step up.”

Lewiston held Mt. Ararat to 7-for-28 shooting in the middle periods, reversing an early 10-7 deficit into a 19-14 lead at halftime and a 23-15 cushion early in the third.

Mt. Ararat battled back to tie it at 27 on Swan’s first trey. But Lewiston (7-for-10 from the floor in the period) scored seven straight on buckets by Turcotte, Cote and Dumas and a Corbin Hyde free throw to regain command.

Cote, Dumas and McKinnon each scored two in another 6-0 run to give the Devils their largest lead.

“Nobody in the league has better kids in the locker room than I do,” Farrar said. “There are just a couple of things we need to work on as coaches with little situations at the end of games.”

koakes@sunjournal.com

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