LEWISTON — Bangor’s defense clamped down in the final quarter, allowing the Rams to get past Lewiston 49-44 in a Class AA North girls basketball game Thursday.

Bangor trailed by eight points heading into the fourth period but scored the final 13 points of the game while holding the Blue Devils scoreless for four-plus minutes.

“At halftime, we really wanted to focus on our defense,” Rams senior Mimi Quinn said. “Just stopping their scoring ability was huge, and I think our composure really helped us do that.”

Quinn, who scored the go-ahead basket with about a minute left, led Bangor (10-4) with 19 points and 12 rebounds.

“She’s one of the better players in the state. She’s a dominant player,” Bangor coach Jay Kemble said. “One thing she can do is she can post you up and she can face you up. And there aren’t a lot of girls in the state that can play both ways, and that gives us a huge advantage.”

Avery Clark scored 10 in the fourth, including three free throws in the final 40 seconds to seal the victory, and she finished with 13 points. She also grabbed eight rebounds.

Lewiston’s (8-7) Natalie Beaudoin led all scorers with 21 points.

“We played Bangor at their place … two weeks ago, and she had a rough one. Wasn’t the game she was looking for,” Lewiston coach Josh Morin said. “So I was assuming she was going to come back strong tonight. She hit some shots early, which helps us.”

Ellie Legare added 10 points and Koral Morin had eight for Lewiston.

The Blue Devils and the Rams were facing off for the second time in less than two weeks — the first meeting won by Lewiston 46-43 in Bangor on a buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Morin.

“You know, this game was a playoff-type atmosphere,” Kemble said of Thursday’s game. “Lewiston’s a good club. They’ve got some skill, they’ve got shooters, they’ve got athletes. It was a physical game.

“For both teams, it was a growing game, just like the three-point loss we had at the buzzer at our place. You play in those types of games, you learn. You learn how to play when games are tight and play with better poise, and I think we’re starting to do that. We’re young, we’re a young team.”

Six of the eight players who played for Bangor were underclassmen, and Thursday was the first game decided by five points or less that the Rams have won this season.

The teams battled back and forth in the first half Thursday, swapping runs and the lead throughout the opening two quarters.

Bangor scored the game’s first six points, then Lewiston scored the next six to even the score.

After the Rams broke the 6-6 tie with a basket by Dalaney Horr, the Blue Devils scored seven straight points — Beaudoin hit a 3-pointer and later made a fast-break layup following a steal, and Skylar Gaudette fed Legare for a basket — putting Lewiston up 13-8.

Quinn, who had eight rebounds in the period — added a free throw to make it 13-9 after one.

Bangor scored the first four points of the second quarter, but Lewiston netted the next five to go up 18-13.

The Rams caught up and the teams traded leads throughout the final three minutes of the half, which ended with the Blue Devils holding a 25-24 advantage.

Beaudoin broke a tie with a 3 early in the second half and soon added another basket to make it 30-25.

Gaudette scored a couple of baskets later in the third, and Lewiston took a 40-32 lead into the fourth quarter.

Gaudette, a senior, provided a nice complement to the Blue Devils’ “big three” — Beaudoin, Morin and Legare — tallying four points and also grabbing five rebounds and made three steals.

“And we needed it,” Morin said of Gaudette’s performance. “We needed someone other than our big three to step up, and she did that tonight. I’m happy for her because, except the big three, I’m probably hardest on her on the entire team. And I know she knows that.

“So she played well, especially in a tight game. I was impressed.”

Four straight points by the Rams cut the deficit to four points, then four in a row by the Blue Devils got it back to eight points, 44-36.

Clark scored with 4:16 left to start Bangor’s game-winning 13-0 run. Along with Clark’s 10 points in the fourth, Quinn scored four, Horr two and Emily Adams made a free throw. The Rams put up 17 in the quarter while limiting the Blue Devils to four points.

“Sometimes, as young as we are, you have to live through those experiences,” Kemble said. “They’re a gritty group of kids and they take pride in playing defense, and I think they were just a little more aggressive at trusting themselves in that fourth quarter.”

Morin said the Blue Devils also are gaining close-game experience — lessons that were learned the hard way Thursday. Lewiston found ways to score throughout the first 26 or 27 minutes, but were less sharp down the stretch.

“Kids lost their heads, started chucking the ball all over the place,” Morin said. “This group, there’s a bunch of seniors, but they haven’t been in a lot of those games so far in their high school career.”

Lewiston has three games remaining in the regular season and doesn’t play again until next Thursday at home against Portland (2-11). The Blue Devils are coming off a challenging seven-game stretch that included two against Cheverus, the unanimous No. 1 ranked team in the Varsity Maine poll, two against Bangor, and one apiece against Edward Little, Oxford Hills and Massabesic.

The Devils won two of those games. Morin said they were able to move on quickly from the losses because those were followed by another challenging opponent, but Thursday’s setback against Bangor has to fester for a week.

“We got a week off, so it’s like, we’re probably gonna think about this one until we play our next one next Thursday, which stinks,” Morin said.

Lewiston finishes the regular season with road games against Oxford Hills (7-5) on Feb. 6 and Edward Little (5-10) on Feb. 8.

Bangor’s next game is at home versus Edward Little, which the Rams defeated 44-34 on Jan. 4.

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