MONMOUTH — The Monmouth Mustangs have worked on the play a number of times in practice, with nothing but the Foster Gymnasium air guarding them, and it’s never gone nearly as well as it did Monday night.

Which is fine by the Mustangs.

Ryan Baillargeon and Corey Dyke worked the pick-and-roll to perfection to score the game-winning basket with 5.3 seconds remaining in overtime as the Mustangs dropped Wiscasset, 44-42, in a tight Mountain Valley Conference tilt.

Coming out of their own timeout with 37 seconds left, the Mustangs (3-1) worked the weave on the perimeter before Baillargeon broke for the foul line, took a screen from Dyke, then passed to Dyke as he slipped past his defender and cut down the left side of the lane for the layup.

“We’ve got weak side action if they collapse on Corey, and they didn’t. They covered man-to-man there,” Monmouth coach Lucas Turner said. “Corey slipped under him and made a layup. It was well executed. I told them in the locker room we haven’t it executed it that well in practice, 5-on-0. They picked a heck of a time to execute it.”

“Our biggest issue with that play is we hadn’t been getting in the right position. Everyone was where they really need to be and it opened up and it was a nice pass,” Dyke said. “I felt (the defender) drop behind me off to the left to kind of hedge off the screen and I knew that I could seal him off from there.”

Dyke made his game-winner stand up by sliding over from the weak side along the baseline and taking a charge from Cody Griffin as the Wiscasset senior drove down the right side of the lane trying to tie the score with 0.1 second left.

Dyke led Monmouth with 13 points, while Tim Whitmore chipped in with 12 points and Elliott Kahl nine. Jordan Jones and Griffin led Wiscasset (0-4) with 16 points and seven rebounds, but Griffin was held to just three points in the second half.

“We started Dyke on him and he got a couple of quick fouls, so my hand was forced to switch Elliott on him, and I thought Elliott did a heck of a job on him,” Turner said. “We gave him lots of help. Whenever (Griffin) would cut through he middle we would have Corey hedge with him, but Elliott just did a great job of playing with him in the second half.” 

Although their top scorer was neutralized, the Redskins were able to scrap back from a 10-point deficit early in the third quarter, thanks mostly to Jones, who scored 14 of his points in the second half. A putback by Kahl and a fast break layup by Dyke made it 27-17 Mustangs, but the Redskins closed the quarter with a 17-4 run. Jones sparked the run by penetrating to the hoop for two hoops and stepping back for a pair of 3-pointers, the last of which put his team up, 34-31, to end the quarter.

A Jones layup to start the fourth gave the Redskins their largest lead. Monmouth bounced back on a drive by Whitmore and recaptured the lead  on a Kahl hoop off a Baillargeon feed that made it 38-36 midway through the fourth.

“That’s our second game in a row where we got in a little bit of a rut, dug ourselves into a bit of a hole, and responded, which is huge,” Turner said. “It can go either way when you dig into a rut. You can keep doing the things you’re doing wrong and then go from down from three to down 10, or we can respond and make it a game, and the guys have responded twice now.”

The Mustangs were in the bonus for the balance of the fourth, but after shooting well from the charity stripe through the first three quarters (7-for-9), they went cold when they had a chance to put Wiscasset away. The Redskins took a 40-39 lead on a lefty layup by Mason Brewer with 1:27 to go. Robbie Neal tied it again by making one of two from the line with 1:14 left. Wiscasset then held the ball for the final shot.

Coming out of a time out with 7.5 seconds left, the Redskins appeared to have something set up for Griffin, but tight defense by Kahl forced Jones to try a 3-pointer from the left wing which came up short and sent the game to overtime.

Griffin drew his fourth foul a little under a minute into the extra session, sending Whitmore to the line to make one of two and give the Mustangs the early lead. Jay Lamoreux scored inside to give Wiscasset the lead with 2:18 left. Whitmore was fouled five seconds  later and again made one of two free throws.

Griffin had a chance to give the Redskins the lead but he missed the front end of a one-and-one, allowing the Mustangs to set up their final play. Wiscasset  shot 2-for-10 from the foul line in the game, Monmouth 16-for-23.