AUGUSTA – Edward Little High School celebrated its biggest boys’ basketball victory in 53 years Wednesday night.

Can’t prove it, but I’ll stand on the limb, wince when I hear the crunch and say that Yusuf Iman banked home the biggest shot in the school’s history.

And while EL and Bangor might not have saved the watered-down product that is Maine scholastic hoop with one night’s work, they left some of us with the hope that it isn’t dead yet.

Those who paid the $7 or $4 fare were treated to the best tournament game at Augusta Civic Center since the year most of the kids on the court this week were born.

Jeff Love of Winthrop hit the buzzer-beater to ignite the bedlam and shake the building’s foundation that night in February 1992. Iman unloaded from almost the same spot, stricken with hands in his face, blessed with momentary dementia that allowed him to forget the carbon-copy he bricked to end regulation less than 10 minutes earlier.

“I missed two game-winning shots in summer basketball,” Iman recalled. “I said, ‘Coach, I don’t know, man. I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t know if I can put the team on my back and send us home.’ But I feel like at the end of the game, being a senior captain, I want the ball.”

Iman nailed the same shot at Brewer for a walk-off win a month ago. This one, on a grander stage under the glare of exponentially more eyeballs, rattled off the window and through the net with T-minus three seconds and counting.

He’s a senior with a snowball’s chance in the concession stand hot dog steamer of winning the highly political, lifetime achievement award known as Mr. Basketball. But Iman was the best player for miles around this winter.

Now his team is in the Eastern Class A final for the third consecutive year. Twice in a row EL has knocked out old tormentor Bangor in the semifinals. And the Red Eddies did it with a panache that trumps even their proud predecessors.

EL rallied from 10 points down in the final 3:57 of regulation. From the time Bangor’s Tristan Thomas nailed his first of four 3-pointers to make it 7-6 in the first period, EL never led again until Iman’s free throw sounded the first gong of overtime.

“I didn’t know if we’d come back against Bangor, down 10,” said EL coach Mike Adams. “Doesn’t happen. Doesn’t happen. Not against that team.”

Adams is completing his first decade as chairman of what is now one of the five powerhouse programs in the state.

The Eddies were 2-16 his first year. They’d known the extremes of both 0-18 and 18-0 under the previous boss, Mike Francoeur.

Crushing chronological mileposts are daunting as 1918 used to be for the Red Sox. Last state title: 1946. Last regional title before ‘09: 1957.

Five years ago, EL would have been beaten the second they took the court and read the ‘BANGOR’ across Zach Blodgett’s chest. Wednesday, Iman saw Blodgett’s 17 first-half points and approached Adams with a simple request: Lemme at him.

“I think he’s our best on-the-ball defender,” Adams said, “But at first I thought, we can’t do that. Blodgett had 17 points from outside, and now he’s going to get 100 points on offensive rebounds.”

No worries. EL big men James Philbrook and Bo Leary, saddled with foul trouble that would have sent Eddies of yesteryear into a funk, played like the premier front-court tandem in the region that they are.

Philbrook and Leary combined for 15 points and nine rebounds in the fourth quarter and OT. Leary dished to Philbrook for the lay-up that knotted it with 22 seconds remaining. Together, they harassed Clark Noonan into a close-range miss to stifle Bangor’s last sojourn in regulation.

They scored seven in a row, with a Leary steal in the mix, to erase most of a 53-43 deficit.

And Blodgett? Two points after the half.

“(Adams) could have said just said ‘rebound’ and sent us back out,” Iman said. “We needed to rebound. We just threw out our pride and went out there and got dirty. I didn’t rebound but Quin (Leary, a freshman) and Bo and James, they picked up the slack for me.”

Picking up the slack is what Bangor, Portland, Westbrook and Cheverus do every year.

Add EL to the inner circle. Only a basketball factory recovers from losing Troy Barnies (University of Maine), Corey Therriault and Eric Prue (Wentworth), Ben Hartnett (St. Anselm) and Kyle Philbrook (Bates) in a three-year window.

But little brethren and former wide-eyed teammates have adopted their work ethic and stirred up a team chemistry that could blow the lid off this joint.

“We think it’s destined for us,” Iman said. “I feel like it’s our time after all that happened last year. I figured it was our time to step in.”

EL welcomes the old hat of a regional final Friday night. Waiting in line: Brewer, perhaps the team that best demonstrates the paradigm shift in Eastern Maine basketball.

Besides Iman’s buzzer-beater, the Eddies walloped the Witches in two other encounters that weren’t as close.

Long second fiddle to Bangor along the shores of the Penobscot River, Brewer is the No. 1 seed. But there’s no question that the psychological advantage now rests in the camp of No. 2. Perhaps EL is the new Bangor.

“We might have had bigger teams. We might have had teams with better players,” Adams said, “But there’s something about this group.”

Something those who make the annual pilgrimage to the capital city haven’t seen in a generation. And something EL fans have seen, never.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].