LEWISTON — If Bowdoin still felt the sting of embarrassment from a 21-point defeat the last time it walked off the Alumni Gymnasium floor, its effort on the boards in the first half of Thursday’s game with Bates certainly didn’t give any indication.

The much bigger Polar Bears asserted themselves in the second half and rallied from a 13-point deficit to force overtime, then rode Bryan Hurley’s heroics to a 74-70 victory.

“Last year, maybe the first five minutes of the second half, we were getting laughed at because we were down by 30,” Hurley said. “It was an ugly game. So it was nice to see that out team could come back from down 10 with the crowd getting amped.”

Hurley’s basket with 11.2 seconds left  in the extra session put Bowdoin in front for good at 72-70. Coming out of a timeout, the Polar Bears (4-2) ran an isolation play for the sophomore guard, who drove down the right side of the lane, pump faked, then hit a step-through jumper off the glass from about eight feet with six seconds remaining on the shot clock.

“My initial plan was to take a pull-up jumper but up-fake first,” Hurley said. “He didn’t really bite on the up-fake, so I kind of just had to step through and throw it off the glass. It didn’t go in that clean. I thought it was going to go in cleaner than that.”

Hurley led Bowdoin with 17 points, six rebounds and six assists. Maximillian Staiger added 13 points. Graham Safford paced Bates (3-5) with a game-high 21 points, six rebounds and four assists. Ed Bagdanovich added 12 points and Mike Boornazian and Mark Brust chipped in with 11 apiece.

Bates went on a 15-4 run to close the first half and take a 33-24 lead into the intermission. Bowdoin rotated a front line with three players standing 7-feet, 6-foot-10 and 6-foot-6, while Bates could counter with just one player at least 6-foot-6, Bogdanovich. Yet the Bobcats dominated the boards, 18-10, including 9-1 on the offensive glass. They converted those second chances into 12 points.

“At halftime,” Bowdoin coach Tim Gilbride said, “without even going into anything else, I said “We can talk about x’s and o’s, we can talk about whether to play zone or whether to play man. If we don’t stop them from getting offensive rebounds, we’re not going to win.'”

“We were active with our offense, so we were difficult to box out because we were cutting and screening and getting good shots,” Bates coach Jon Furbush said. “We kind of got stagnant in the second half. That’s when we didn’t have any activity on the glass to get second-chance opportunities.”

Bowdoin doubled-up Bates on the boards in the second half and overtime (28-14, 13-6 offensive).

Bogdanovich’s free throws gave Bates a 39-26 lead 86 seconds into the second half. Bowdoin gradually chipped away with its work on the offensive boards and a tough 2-3 zone.

A putback by 7-foot center John Swords and a baseline drive by Lucas Hausman on the fourth shot of its ensuing possession put the Polar Bears in front, 54-53, with 6:34 left. Bates was in the midst of missing eight shots in a row.

“Poise on offense, with a lot more patience,” Hurley said of his team’s second-half comeback. “We didn’t let the crowd get to us. We ran our stuff and got good looks. Then on defense, our intensity was so much better.”

The lead changed hands three more times before Keegan Pieri tied it for Bowdoin at 62-62 with a jumper from the right elbow with 33 seconds left. Bates took two time outs on its final possession of regulation, but all it could muster was a desperation 27-footer from Luke Matarazzo that bounced off the front of the rim at the buzzer.

“I think they got a little caught up in the emotion of the game,” Furbush said of the Bobcats. “We have a young group. It was the first time our gym was as loud as it was and we got caught up in the emotion a little bit and got away from our game plan.”

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