LEWISTON — An ugly first half lowered Lewiston coach Tim Farrar’s expectations for either team’s offensive production in the second half of Thursday night’s inter-class KVAC boys’ basketball match with Mt. Ararat.

“After that first half, anything going in was a bonanza,” Farrar said.

Indeed, Evan Williams’ back-to-back 3-pointers to start the fourth quarter were very profitable for Farrar and his Blue Devils, turning a 35-31 deficit to start the period into a 37-35 lead.

Thanks to excellent free-throw shooting down the stretch, Lewiston never trailed again in a 56-49 win.

Yasin Mohamud led four Lewiston (3-13) players in double figures with 16 points, along with seven rebounds and four assists. Williams scored 12 of his 15 in the second half, while Hunter Dickinson added 11 points and Isaiah Teague 10 points.

James Singleton paced Class A Mt. Ararat (9-7) with 14 points off the bench.

Williams knocked down both tide-turning 3s from the same spot in the left corner, the second giving Lewiston a 37-35 lead with 6:57 to go.

“I wanted them to get me the ball because I felt like I’d get hot,” said Williams, who also knocked down four clutch free throws in the final minute to keep the Eagles at a safe distance.

“We wanted that win bad,” he added. “We haven’t won that many games and we wanted this one.”

Mt. Ararat tied the game one last time when J.D. Dionne hit a pair of free throws after Williams’ second trey. But Lewiston answered with a pair of free throws from Dickinson to take the lead for good.

Dickinson followed that with a traditional three-point play to give the Devils their largest lead to that point, 42-37, with 5:03 remaining.

The Eagles pulled within three a couple of more times, and had one opportunity to tie it after a rare miss from the charity stripe by Lewiston kept the deficit at three. But they missed a 3-pointer from the left corner, subsequently losing their leading scorer, senior Jared Balser, who drew his fifth foul in the rebounding action with 41.8 seconds left.

Williams made both resulting free throws and the Eagles never got any closer.

“We just really didn’t get going,” Mt. Ararat coach David Dubreuil said. “They did a great job. I can’t take anything away from Lewiston. They put on a lot of ball pressure and I think that was frustrating us to a point.”

Credit 6-foot senior center Teague with inflicting a lot of the frustration by muscling with Balser in the paint and holding the 6-foot-8 senior, who averages about 16 points per game, to four points, all of which came in the fourth quarter.

“Isaiah Teague was tremendous,” Farrar said. “Nothing was easy (for Balser). (Teague) allowed us to play single on him. We didn’t have to double. We don’t win that game without Isaiah Teague.”

“I just wanted to stay behind him, stay down, and not fall for any pump fakes,” Teague said. “I just played my heart out tonight. I felt like I had him frustrated all night.”

Both teams were frustrated during a ragged first half that saw them combine for 16-for-41 shooting and 23 turnovers. They were tied, 8-8, after the first quarter. Mt. Ararat held a 19-18 edge at halftime.

“We told (the team) at halftime this game wasn’t going in the Louvre or anything,” Farrar said. “But that’s OK. We just have to keep battling. Our defense was keeping us close.”

Each side gradually moved the ball better as the third quarter unfolded, exchanging the lead four times before Mt. Ararat opened up a couple of possessions worth of breathing room, thanks to 3-pointers by reserves Caleb Manuel and Nathan Taylor. The former equaled the Eagles’ largest lead of the game at 30-25, while the latter produced the tenuous four-point lead they took into the fourth.

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