AUBURN — As Thursday night’s KVAC clash unfolded, the rim at Edward Little’s end seem to gradually shrink to the size of a pinhole, while the iron on Oxford Hills’ side appeared to grow to the circumference of the Earth.

Then the Red Eddies buckled down defensively in the final five minutes of regulation and overtime and turned the tables to pull out a 58-54 victory.

EL (3-1) scored the first seven points of overtime, five of them from the free-throw line. Oxford Hills (2-3) went more than nine minutes without scoring a point between the latter stages of regulation and most of overtime. Only a Jake Hall 3-pointer just before the buzzer kept the Vikings from being shut out in the extra session.

“We were lucky this game was in Auburn. We certainly wouldn’t have won if this was in South Paris,” EL coach Mike Adams said. “It was a good test for us again. I remember playing Oxford Hills toward the end of the season a couple of years ago when we were 18-0, and they had us. Those kids believe that they can beat us, and they can.”

Bowen Leary fell just two blocks shy of a triple-double (18 points, 17 rebounds, eight blocks) for the Eddies, while Yusuf Iman added 16 points and Brandon Giguere 10, including six crucial points between them in overtime. Cody Hadley led a balanced Oxford Hills ledger with 12 points and five steals while Andrew Keniston added 11 points, all in the second half.

Playing once again without center James Philbrook (toe injury), EL needed Leary to step up and he did. The 6-foot-3 junior dominated the paint in the first half, collecting 10 of his 12 points on putbacks while single-handedly out-rebounding the Vikings, 7-3, on the offensive glass. Not surprisingly, that was  the difference in the first half as the Eddies led by nine, 31-22, at intermission.

“He works hard to do everything the right way. There’s no cutting corners with him,” Adams said of Leary. “That’s why we’re always going to get a consistent output from him. Some teams are just going to do what (Oxford Hills) did in the second half and sag in on him.”

The Vikings did indeed swarm Leary any time he got the ball inside. Unfortunately for EL, the guards weren’t able to make them pay from the outside. The Eddies shot 1-for-16 from behind the 3-point line.

“We’ve told our guards a million times that it’s good that everybody knows that Bowen is good. It’s good that everybody knows that James Philbrook, when he gets back in, is good. That makes our guards better. That makes it easier for you guys to get open shots,” Adams said. “We have guys who can catch and shoot. We just have to find the spots for those guys to be on the floor to make them more available to us.”

“We talked about (keeping the ball from Leary in the paint) before the game but it didn’t happen,” Vikings coach Scott Graffam said. “At halftime, we had to talk about it again and we did a much better job of it in the second half.”

The Vikings got their inside-out game going to chip away in the third quarter. Nate Dubois scored on a couple of drives, including a three-point play to pull them within two. That’s when Keniston started to heat up from the perimeter, drilling a pair of 3-pointers to tie the game. 

Hadley’s layup gave Oxford Hills the lead at the end of three, then Keniston and Hadley knocked down 3-pointers to widen the margin to it largest point for the Vikes, 51-45 with 5:17 remaining. Oxford Hills shot 8-for-12 from behind the arc in regulation, but did not score a point again until Hall’s meaningless trey at the end of OT. EL responded with a 6-0 run, as Leary scored  his second field goal of the second half to knot it at 51-51 with two minutes remaining. Keniston and Iman missed 3-pointers in the final minute to send the game into overtime. 

Iman opened the OT scoring with a steal and layup 50 seconds in. The rest of the Eddies’ points would come from the free-throw line as the Vikings missed their first eight shots and turned the ball over three times.

“We had the players on the floor that had just played very well in the second half, but in the overtime, we just didn’t execute,” Graffam said. “We took a charge. We turned it over twice (more). These guys are seniors. I don’t know what to say.”