AUBURN — Tournament basketball is full of ups and downs, but the latter followed the former far too quickly far too frequently to St. Dom’s liking Wednesday night.

Too often in the Western Class C prelim at Callahan Gymnasium, the highs of a good defensive stop by the Saints were followed by the lows of a second opportunity for Georges Valley. The Buccaneers, and specifically 6-foot-3 senior center Alex Grierson, converted enough of those second opportunities into points to overcome some lackluster shooting and ultimately pull out a 66-61 victory in double overtime.

No. 9 Georges Valley (10-9) advances to the quarterfinals to face top-seeded Livermore Falls (8:30 p.m., Monday), which is coached by the Buccaneers’ all-time leading scorer, Travis Magnusson. No. 8 St. Dom’s finishes its season at 11-8.

Grierson (16 points, 25 rebounds) led a 21-8 effort on the offensive boards by the Bucs with a dozen of his own. His last putback put the Bucs in front for good, 60-58, with under two minutes remaining in the second OT.

“We were all looking to attack the glass,” said Grierson, who led his team to 51-30 overall advantage on the boards. “We knew they were kind of weak on the boards and whenever a shot went up, we all wanted to get the rebound.”

“That’s been our Achilles’ heel all year, and we knew they attacked the rebounds hard, especially Grierson,” St. Dom’s coach Ryan Deschenes said. “He killed us, whether we stepped up on penetration, no one covered down on him. He was active all night.”

Grierson’s effort spoiled a triple-double by the Saints’ Peter Keaney (34 points, 12 rebounds, 10 steals), who sent the game into double-overtime by grabbing a missed free throw and going coast-to-coast for a runner that beat the buzzer. Nate Poulin added 14 points for the Saints. Logan Cross led Georges Valley with 23 points and Ben Wallace added 18 points.

Wallace, who scored 10 of his 18 points in the overtime sessions, followed Grierson’s putback with a runner and a free throw to make it a five-point game. Poulin drilled a 3-pointer to pull the Saints back within two with 45 seconds left, but another Wallace drive to the hoop followed by a travelling call when Keaney slipped and fell to the floor sealed the Saints’ fate.

“Tonight, we didn’t shoot the ball that well (32 percent in regulation). St. Dom’s played good defense. We’re pretty evenly matched,” said Georges Valley coach Scott Johnson, whose team lost twice to St. Dom’s, by five and 11 points, during the regular season. “Playing in someone else’s gym, that’s a good win. Alex has been playing really well the last six for eight games, and getting second chances really, really kill the defense.”

The Buccaneers needed all of the second chances they could get early on. They missed 13 of their 15 first-quarter shots. The Saints, meanwhile, drew Georges Valley out of its 2-1-2 zone by making three of five 3-point attempts to establish a 13-5 lead.

But then St. Dom’s went cold in the second quarter, shooting just 1-for-9 from the field against the Bucs’ man-to-man. Cross (six points) started to heat up and pulled GV to within two, 16-14, at halftime.

“We were lucky to get some shots early and that pulled them out,” Deschenes said. “Then they went to man and we started to get stagnant again and didn’t have that much flow in the second quarter. In the second half, we did have good flow. We were scoring fine, but we stopped defending, or we’d defend them for one possession and they’d get the second-chance points.”

“We were actually going to go box-and-one on Peter Keaney because we knew that he controlled the ball most of the time,” Johnson said. “But we noticed watching the tape that they struggle a little bit, and it also keeps your foul trouble down and you can rebound a little bit better out of it.”

Grierson gave the Bucs their first lead with, surprise, a putback with 3:42 left in the third quarter. 

“Once you start seeing the ball go in, things start clicking,” Grierson said 

Georges Valley would not trail again until Keaney put back his own miss with 10 seconds remaining in regulation. The sophomore was fouled in the act and made the free throw for a 46-44 Saints lead. The Bucs took a time out, advanced the ball past midcourt, then called their last time out with 7.8 seconds left. Cross took the ensuing inbounds pass at the 3-point line, dribbled to the low block and hit a five-footer with 4.5 seconds left to force the first overtime.

The Buccaneers led most of the first extra session, going up 52-49 on Grierson’s putback with 1:25 to go. A pair of Keaney free throws cut the margin to one with 40 seconds left. After a Georges Valley turnover, Grierson denied the Saints the chance to take the lead by drawing an offensive foul with 9.7 seconds remaining. St. Dom’s immediately fouled Wallace with 8.9 seconds left. He sank the first free throw to make it 55-53 before missing the second and giving Keaney a chance to go end-to-end to tie it.

“Obviously I’m very proud of our effort and our resiliency,” Deschenes said. “We had a good year, right what I expected besides not getting to Augusta. What really hurts right now is last week we had to win one game to get the bye, we were five seconds away from it in Wiscasset, and we didn’t. I think we recovered from that and played well tonight. Georges Valley was just a tiny bit better than us in the end.”