PARIS — Lewiston was given daylight to make a game-tying 3-pointer at the end of regulation. Oxford Hills senior Cassidy Dumont made sure the Blue Devils didn’t get the same chance at the end of overtime.
Dumont ripped the ball out of Lewiston’s hands with the clock winding down in the extra session, then dribbled it away until the final horn sounded on a 56-53 senior night victory on Thursday.
Dumont said she wasn’t looking to steal the ball, she just didn’t want the Blue Devils (3-2) to get a shot off like the one Lewiston freshman Ellie Legare made to send the game to overtime with 11 seconds left in regulation.
“Cassidy is just great at everything that she does,” Oxford Hills coach Nate Pelletier said.
Dumont scored the final four points for the Vikings (3-0) and finished with a game-high 22.
Brooklyn Alexander opened overtime with a 3-pointer, and Dumont said that shot gave the Vikings “a little bit of oomph to play defense and want to really hustle back and make sure that we won.”
Jamyah Nicolas scored the only four points of overtime for Lewiston and finished with 12.
The Blue Devils got off to a rocky start, and head coach Craig Jipson used three timeouts in the first 5:26 of the game — they came with the score tied 0-0, with Oxford Hills up 5-0, and then with the Vikings up 13-8 after Lewiston took a brief 6-5 lead on 3s by Emily Strachan and Natalie Beaudoin.
“I don’t know if they calmed down as much as we just tried to convince them that a certain level of play is unacceptable. We’re not going to settle for you to go half-speed, and I thought they responded to that,” Jipson said. “I thought they showed a lot more intensity, and they battled down the stretch.”
Oxford Hills senior Viktoria Sugars scored her only two points on a buzzer-beater at the end of the first quarter, giving the Vikings an 18-12 lead.
Dumont stayed hot from the first into the second, hitting a pair of 3s in each quarter as part of a 14-point first half. The other Vikings senior, Ella Kellogg, scored five in the second quarter to help send Oxford Hills into halftime up 29-21.
The Vikings stretched their lead to as much as 39-26 in the third, with Molly Corbett’s eight points in the frame leading the way. The Blue Devils finished on an 8-0 run, consisting of a Nicolas three-point play, a Legare 3-pointer and then a Legare floater with two seconds left.
A Strachan 3 early in the fourth cut it to 39-37. Then, after a Kellogg layup, Natalie Beaudoin converted a pair of layups to tie the game 41-41.
The Blue Devils grabbed the lead and went up 45-41 on baskets by Myah Nicolas and Strachan.
“Some kids came up with some big shots,” Jipson said. “We just came up one shot (short) — and I would say even more, there were some silly turnovers down the stretch.”
Oxford Hills stormed back on an Alexander steal and layup, then a pair of front-end free throws by Kellogg, with Lewiston turning the ball over after getting the rebound on each back-end miss.
Kellogg’s basket with 1:32 left gave the Vikings the lead at 47-45, and her offensive rebound of a Dumont miss at 48-46 led to Dumont getting another chance at the line, where she converted 1 of 2 to make it 49-46.
Legare then made what Jipson called a “big-time shot.”
The freshman finished with eight points, while Strachan led Lewiston with 15 and Beaudoin matched Nicolas with 12.
Corbett and Kellogg each had 11 for Oxford Hills.
“We had two first games that we shot the ball really, really well and we were able to get a pretty big lead, and my question as a coach was, ‘How are we going to react under pressure?'” Pelletier said. “And today, what I really loved about the girls was how hard they worked. Even though we had a little lull in the end of the third, early fourth quarter, where we just couldn’t stop them, they were making some good plays and good shots, we just dug down deep and we were able to get some of those loose balls and hit some big free throws down the stretch.
“As a whole, both programs I think were really excited about the battle we just had. That’s all we’re looking for, is to go out there and have the kids play their butts off.”
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