GRAY — He wasn’t going to miss.

Not on this stage, not at that moment.

Falling backward with a pair of hands in his face, Gray-New Gloucester guard Aaron Boulos lofted the ball toward the basket. He staggered to regain his balance after letting the shot go.

Swish.

“I was just in … I just knew I was going to make it,” Boulos said. “I was just in that zone.”

Boulos pumped his fist, and sprinted back on defense, where he helped his teammates kill the remaining 38 seconds on the clock. His clutch trey from the corner was the difference as the Patriots upset Cape Elizabeth 39-38 in a Western Maine Conference boys’ basketball tilt on Friday.

“I just kept telling the kids, you have to just hang around against good teams,” Gray-NG coach Tony DiBiase said. “We did, and we got some great shooting. Boulos came off the bench, knocked down three or four shots. I thought our defense was pretty good We got some key rebounds and we got a key steal at the end … It’s a big win for us, to beat a team like Cape, because of their stature in the league. These kids are all so young. It’s not only great points for the tournament, but it’s great for the confidence.”

The 3-pointer was one of four for Boulos on the game, all coming in the second half. His 12 points led the team and helped Gray-New Gloucester overcome a six-point, fourth-quarter deficit. The Patriots outscored Cape Elizabeth 12-5 in the final six minutes.

“They shot the ball very well,” Cape Elizabeth coach Jim Ray said. “Those kids made some tough threes, some with guys’ hands right in their face. Making shots like that, you’re going to stay in the game.”

The Patriots kept the ball out of the middle for much of the game, but used a clutch basket from Jean Sedjro with 1:37 to play in the fourth on a cut down low to earn their first lead since six minutes remained in the third quarter.

Matty Pierce, a Cape starter who was in foul trouble early, came back into the game in the fourth and calmly hit a 3-pointer from the left wing to put the visitors back in front at the 1:02 mark. That only set an even bigger stage for Boulos. Instead of working inside for the tie, the Patriots kicked the ball back out to Boulos in the right corner, who drained his fourth trey of the night for the win.

“I was just on, I guess,” Boulos said. “The defense was leaning more toward (Austen Keenan) than toward me, and that left me wide open a lot. When you get those chances you have to shoot those.”

Neither team could buy a basket in the opening quarter. The Capers held a 7-1 lead until 1:36 remained in the opening stanza, when Sedjro scooped in a double underneath followed by a long-distance trey from Keenan.

Cape threatened again to run away with the game in the second, again building a six-point advantage. But the Patriots (3-11) closed the half on a 10-0 run to grab the lead by four at the break.

“It’s all confidence,” Ray said. “You’ve got to shoot the ball when you’re open. Sometimes it goes in, sometimes it doesn’t. The ball wasn’t going in early, so then nobody wanted to shoot it. You have to shoot the open shots. Then they start to play a bit looser, then a couple of them went in. Then, the game gets close again, and they start to think too much.”

“Once we started taking shots, and making a few, things kind of opened up,” DiBiase said.

Will Shafer drilled a three to open the second half and pushed the home team ahead by seven. But Cape answered in kind. A 13-0 run, punctuated by three consecutive 3-pointers, tilted the see-saw back in the Capers’ direction, where it remained until the final frame.