By Randy Whitehouse,Staff Writer

BANGOR – A win is a win, but Oxford Hills needed more than just a win Friday night, and Matt McDonnell knew it.

McDonnell poured in a game-high 23 points to go with eight rebounds to lead the second-seeded Vikings to a 55-39 win over No. 6 Gardiner on Friday night at the Bangor Auditorium.

Oxford Hills will face No. 9 Hampden Academy in the regional final, which has been moved to Monday night due to the weather. It will be the Vikings’ first Eastern regional final ever and their first since winning the Western A title in 1990.

“There’s no question, we needed a game up here like this,” Vikings’ coach Scott Graffam said. “This particular group of kids has had a very hard time, and to have McDonnell play that way, he really took our team on his shoulders tonight, I thought.”

McDonnell hit two of his three 3-pointers in the first quarter, then helped propel the Vikings (17-3) on a 16-0 run spread over the first two quarters that put the young Tigers in too deep of a hole.

“I really needed to do that for this team,” McDonnell said. “We needed to get over that hump and jump out to a lead. I knew once we did that, we’d roll from there.”

They rolled from there because of their defense, which limited Gardiner to three field goals in each period and 28 percent shooting from the floor.

“Right now, we’re defending very well,” said Graffam, whose team held Cony to 26 points in the quarterfinals. “We didn’t make the mistake of letting them jam it inside. Well, they did, but they had to work for it.”

Sean McNally led the Tigers (14-7) with 14 points and 14 rebounds. The Vikings defended the 6-7 sophomore much the same way they guarded Cony’s Doug Joerss, doubling him in the low post whenever he was on the strong side, with Corey Saunders (10 points, five rebounds) fronting him and another defender behind him. A third and sometimes a fourth Viking would collapse on McNally whenever he did get the ball.

“Coach Graffam’s kids played great defense on us and that frustrated us,” said Gardiner coach Dana Doran. “I think where we got in trouble was when we turned the ball over looking for McNally inside and they got points off turnovers.”

The Vikings contained McNally, but perhaps more importantly, they virtually shut down the rest of the Gardiner offense, including their second inside option, Craig Toulouse (three points), who scored 15 points in the quarterfinals.

Eric Collins had nine and Ryan Stilphen eight for the Tigers.

“Toulouse got 10 against us last time (in a seven-point Gardiner win during the regular season). Collins and Stilphen both got double-digits on us last time, also,” Graffam said. “We did a really good job on Stilphen tonight. He didn’t get to penetrate too many times.”

Stilphen’s jumper with 2:07 left in the first quarter was the last Gardiner bucket before the fateful 16-0 run. Saunders and Ben Ryerson got that going with back-to-back 3s to end the first quarter. McDonnell added a trey of his own and Thomas Kothe contributed a hoop and a free throw before McNally finally snapped the run with a putback that made it 25-10 2 minutes into the second quarter.

The Tigers then scored eight straight points to get back in the game, but a Josh Powell 3-pointer hiked the lead back into double-digits, 28-17, for halftime. By the end of the half, the Vikings had taken as many 3-pointers (17) as the Tigers had shots from the floor, and held an 11-shot advantage overall thanks in large part to their work on the offensive boards and their ability to take care of the ball (four turnovers).

“What it came down to was we got a little nervous. The nerves and the anxiety definitely had an impact in the first half,” Doran said. “I don’t think we ever recovered from that.”

The Vikings never let them get any closer than eight points in the second half. A nice give-and-go from Thomas to Leif Kothe made it a 14-point margin nearly five minutes into the fourth quarter. Collins cut it to nine with a 3 with just over two minutes left, but Gardiner didn’t score the rest of the way.

“We didn’t want to give them a run,” McDonnell said. “We know they’re a young team, and if they got a run, they’d build on it.”

Now the Vikings will have to work on building off this win for Monday night.