BANGOR – The label has followed Brunswick everywhere this season.

“Everywhere we go, they’ll chant ‘Mims-wick,'” Dragons’ coach Todd Hanson said. “They say we’re a one-man team, but our kids proved tonight they’ve got a little fight left in them, and I’m awfully proud of them.”

Hanson had reason to be proud after his second-seeded Dragons survived their star guard, Ralph Mims, fouling out early in the fourth quarter and went on to a 75-65 win over No. 6 Cony Friday night at the Bangor Auditorium.

The Dragons will face No. 4 Bangor in the regional final Saturday night.

Mims (11 points) went scoreless in little over three minutes of action in the second half. The senior picked went to the bench with his fourth foul just 1:07 into the second half, returned to the court with 6:46 left in the fourth quarter, then went to the sidelines permanently with his fifth foul with 4:17 to go.

But the Dragons (19-1) got big second-half performances from Kevin Scully, who scored 12 of his 14 points in the second stanza, and Phil Warren, who scored 11 of his 13 points in the final 16 minutes. This happened after Jesse Kaplan (17 points) and Justin Gauvin (14 points) came up big in the first half, when Mims’ foul problems began.

“Everything we hear about is Ralph, Ralph, Ralph, and we don’t have a problem with that as long as we keep winning,” said Scully, who also pulled down eight rebounds. “We had to come out and get it done and we just got it done, because that’s the way we are. We’ve got pride.”

“When Ralph came out in the third quarter, we were up 13, and when he went back in the beginning of the fourth, they’d cut it to 12,” Hanson said. “In six minutes, they’d only made up one point with Ralph on the bench.”

Brunswick actually extended its lead for part of the time Mims was on the bench. A three-point play by Scully gave them a 17-point cushion, 52-35, with 3:29 left in the third.

Cony (15-6) cut that deficit to eight by the time Mims re-entered the game. Craig Cameron’s 3-pointer pulled the Rams within four and got the Cony crowd back into the game. Mims’ fifth foul 35 seconds later sent the Cony partisans into a frenzy.

Cameron closed out a 13-0 Cony run with a steal and layup that gave the Rams their first and only lead of the second half. Warren put the Dragons back on top for good with a 3-point play with 2:55 left, and perhaps more importantly, drew the fifth foul on Cony’s floor leader, Adam Vachon. That began a 9-0 Brunswick run, capped by a Doug Eichinger tip-in that made it 70-63 and put the game away with 1:27 remaining.

rwhitehouse@sunjournal.com

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