AUBURN — The final varsity basketball game at Edward Little High School’s venerable 56-year-old gym needed a memorable ending.
The Red Eddies boys and the rival Blue Devils from Lewiston certainly delivered.
Eli St. Laurent’s putback to beat the buzzer gave the Red Eddies a 42-41 victory in a game that lived up to the rivalry’s and the gym’s history.
“I saw (Landon Cougle) go up with it, I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I might as well hop in there and try and fight with him,'” St. Laurent said. “You know, Diing (Maiwen) and Landon, they did a great job going up, I just happened to be in the right spot, came right down to me, put it in.”
“I thought I did (beat the buzzer),” St. Laurent added. “I heard the buzzer after my shot, but I had no idea. I just started running. I just started running. It was awesome.”
Cougle, Edward Little’s senior big, couldn’t get a pair of layups to go in with the seconds winding down at the end of the game, despite a height advantage over Lewiston’s defenders. But St. Laurent, a junior guard, came swooping to get the final rebound and put the ball in the hoop.
“The ball was there, I needed to be there, I’m one of the taller guys, so I had to get it done,” said Cougle, who said he hurt his elbow when he fell to the floor after his final attempt. “And thank God we had someone that could come behind and finish the job.”
“It was great, because we’re an awful offensive rebounding team, to be honest,” Edward Little coach Mike Adams said. “Our guards don’t offensive rebound. We’ve talked about it all year. And we’ve worked on it all year. And that was probably (Eli’s) only offensive rebound of the game, and he picked a good time to get it.”
St. Laurent’s game-winner ended a fourth quarter in which both teams decided to slow their offenses and look for the best shots against tough defense by their counterparts. The Blue Devils (13-5) got the ball first and bled off the first 70 seconds of the frame before missing a long jumper.
“We actually just were trying to figure some things out, actually,” Lewiston coach Elgin Physic said.
The Red Eddies (6-12), who trailed 37-36 going into the fourth, took a 40-39 lead on a 3-pointer by St. Laurent with 2:13 left.
“We just knew, ‘Stay calm, stay patient, let it work for us,'” St. Laurent said. “They were bound to make a turnover or miss a shot. That’s what just happened. We came down, made a couple big baskets, and it just led to that (memorable ending).”
Jibril Holloman got a floater to bounce in with 1:11 left to give Lewiston the lead again.
The next 70 seconds were frantic, with each team trying to either put the final nail in the coffin or prevent the other from doing so, until St. Laurent delivered.
“Our record’s 6-12. You know, it could have been 5-13, depending on how this game went,” Adams said. “We’ve had seven losses by four points or less. We’ve lost games this year every which way that you could script it up. And this is a team that, we should know how to win those games. And it was kind of like, by the end, it was almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The first half featured the rivals trading blow for blow, with neither going ahead by more than four points.
Cougle, who after the game was chosen as the winner of the Gillette Award as to the player of the game, took advantage of his height early and scored eight points in the first quarter.
“I think he’s one of the best low-post players in the conference, and that opened up everybody else, with him being able to do that,” Adams said.
Marshal Adams, coming off an Edward Little home game record nine 3s in his previous game at the gym, drained a trey and Maiwen got a friendly bounce on a short jumper with less than three seconds left in the first quarter to give the Red Eddies a 13-11 lead.
Baskets by Caed Langley and Eli Bigelow put Lewiston up 15-13 midway through the second quarter. Adams responded with back-to-back 3s to give the lead back to the Red Eddies, 19-15.
Lewiston’s Yusuf Dakane tied the game with a basket and, later, a pair of free throws.
Maiwen scored a basket and later made a free throw to make it 22-19, then Jibril Holloman’s third-chance putback for the Blue Devils at the buzzer made it a 22-21 game at halftime.
“I thought we had a great effort, I just thought we needed just to pick up the energy just a little bit more, just get more into it,” Physic said.
Dakane took over for Lewiston in the third quarter, scoring the Blue Devils’ first 12 points of the period and giving them a 33-32 lead after they trailed 32-24 following Adams’ 3 off an out-of-bounds play 2:45 into the period.
“He’s at his best when he’s in the open floor. Every other coach in our league knows that,” Physic said of Dakane. “So he was able to get out in the open floor, create some opportunities, not only for himself but for some other people. So that was a big, concentrated effort to really just get out and run.”
Lewiston took a 37-36 lead into the fourth quarter.
Dakane led all scorers with 20 points. Holloman finished with 10 for Lewiston.
Cougle paced Edward Little with 13 points, Adams had 12 on four 3s, and St. Laurent’s winner gave him nine for the game.
Cougle said he was proud to win the Gillette Award.
“I don’t know if you heard the list of players that (won before me). They all mean a lot to the community and their teams, and I’m truly honored to follow in their footsteps,” he said.
Both coaches also said they were honored to be part of the gym’s final game, which provided a fitting conclusion to the esteemed gym.
“It means a lot. When I was trying just to get a chip in the game, Coach Adams, I owe him a lot to where I’m at; he gave me a lot of opportunities,” Physic said. “So to come here, be one last time here, is great because to me this place is like home.”
Physic served as an assistant to Adams at Edward Little before becoming Lewiston’s head coach.
“For me, personally, I got a little emotional before the game,” Adams said. “You know, my son (Marshal Adams) was in this gym before he could walk. … To be able to win, it does mean a lot. And to be able to go out and play a game like that, means even more. It was a great way for this gym to be closed down.”
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