AUGUSTA — Twelve was a magic number in Saturday’s Western Class D girls’ basketball championship.

It’s the number of points Greenville senior center Saige Weeks scored against Rangeley, eight of them coming in the second half.

They’re the digits that appear next to Weeks’ and McKenna Peat’s names under the “class” column in the souvenir program, indicating senior status.

Move your eyes across the page to Rangeley’s side of that spread and you won’t find that one-two punch anywhere. Which was a big reason Greenville served up heartaches by the dozen with a second-half comeback and a runaway 46-29 victory at Augusta Civic Center.

“I was hoping that it might work to our advantage,” Rangeley coach Heidi Deery said. “I was hoping that seniors might feel a little tense and think, ‘This is it.’ That was a hope. I didn’t really think so, because I think that Saige is the kind of senior that will step up.”

Rangeley’s starting lineup featured juniors Allie Hammond and Sierra Machacos, sophomores Chantal and Emily Carrier and freshman Jenney Abbott. The only reserves to see significant time were sophomore Alanna Lauter and freshman Abigail Abbott.

Even after getting to the regional final for the second straight year with two one-sided wins, Rangeley (14-7) was the younger and less explosive team.

Weeks, who also hauled down 16 rebounds and blocked four second-half shots, combined with junior and tournament MVP Gretel Breton (18 points, nine boards) to obliterate a 13-11 halftime deficit.

Breton did all her damage after acquiring three first-quarter fouls and playing the entire final period with four.

“I think I got scrappier thinking, ‘We’ve got to win this game.’ We just knew we had to get down into it,” Breton said. “We were playing OK defense, but right there at the end we really picked it up.”

McKenna Peat, also a senior, was a defensive pest after being a double-digit scorer in the first two rounds of the tournament.

Her back-to-back baskets in a 19-second span of the fourth quarter fattened a three-point lead to seven and sent the Moosehead gang marching to its first state final since 1985, when her mother Karen played for Greenville.

“This is our first year playing in the tournament,” said Peat, who endured three consecutive five-win seasons prior to this year’s breakthrough. “Experience served us well, but coming in here and playing in the auditorium, we were new to it all. I think that having a good core group of seniors really did help us with the leadership and stuff.”

Rangeley dusted off its game plan from a semifinal rout of No. 1 Richmond and played it to perfection, luring Breton into foul purgatory and watching a free-throw contest break out.

Jenney Abbott, Hammond and Lauter combined to hit 5-of-6 in one stretch to give Rangeley a four-point edge.

Greenville (17-2) was 4-for-20 from the floor with 19 turnovers in an unsightly first half.

“I don’t feel like we took advantage of (Breton) being out, and when you do that it can come back and really bite you,” Deery said. “You can look to their offense’s taking off, but our offense let us down in the second half. We struggled with that all year. There’s been times that we looked confident and able to execute, and then we’ve had moments like we had today.”

Rangeley went seven minutes without a field goal after Chantal Carrier’s short jumper secured a 19-16 lead with 4:52 remaining in the third quarter. And Greenville took over the game with an 11-3 run.

“Our seniors are the glue to the team in the pressure situations,” Greenville coach John Jardine said. “We’re kind of young other than that.”

With a roster of 12 (there’s that number again) returning intact and an undefeated junior high team waiting in the wings, Rangeley will be heard from in the new decade.

A few paces down the sideline sat a team that didn’t completely share the luxury of waiting until year. The resulting desperation wasn’t a distraction. It was fuel.

“I want the Gold Ball,” Weeks said. “We lost two years in a row in soccer (Western Maine final in 2008, states in 2009), and I could not handle losing again.”

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