LEWISTON — With holidays and blizzards disrupting practice and game schedules, one could expect Bangor and Lewiston to be a little rusty for Tuesday night’s KVAC clash.

This one went from rusty to sloppy to ugly quick, yet ended up being fairly exciting, if not pretty.

Lewiston fought back from a nine-point deficit to trail by one with the ball and 20 seconds left, but a turnover on the Blue Devils’ final possession and solid free throw shooting by the Rams in the waning moments allowed Bangor to escape with a 33-29 victory.

“It was an ugly game,” Bangor coach Roger Reed said. “I can’t imagine we had that many turnovers.”

The Rams had 22 turnovers, to be exact, the same number as the Blue Devils. But thanks to 4-of-7 in the first quarter, Bangor (4-1) was able to keep Lewiston in chase mode despite shooting just 28 percent from the field and getting to the free-throw line 13 times less than Lewiston.

The Blue Devils landed just seven field goals all night, shooting 19 percent from the floor. Turnovers helped prevent them from finding any offensive rhythm.

“We did not take care of the ball. We were just sloppy,” Lewiston coach Tim Farrar said. “They were sloppy, too, but I think we out-sloppied them. It was like we were running in mud. I’m disappointed because we could have beaten a premier team.”

Patrick Stewart was the only player to reach double figures with 10 points and 10 rebounds, and his 3-pointer put Bangor up, 30-21, with 7:09 remaining.

That ended up being the Rams’ final field goal of the game, and their only points in a six-minute span. Yet Lewiston wasn’t able to cut into the lead until Shawn Ricker hit a 3-pointer to make it 30-24 with 2:23 to go.

After shooting 11-for-15 from the line through the first three quarters, Lewiston missed its first five freebies to start the fourth. But a Jeff Turccotte free throw, a Ricker jumper and two Joe McKinnon free throws pulled the Devils within 30-29 with 48 seconds left.

Lewiston got the ball back when Turcotte rejected a Tristan Thomas shot. The Blue Devils missed a pair of shots to take the lead, but Abdi Osman pulled down offensive rebounds after both and Farrar called a time out to set up another shot.

Lewiston looked inside to Corbin Hyde, and Bangor swarmed the junior forward in the post. He kicked the ball out to the perimeter, but the Devils’ hopes were dashed by their 22nd turnover of the night.

“We got the guy who we wanted to have the ball. He thought he had another play and couldn’t make the play,” Farrar said. “It kind of typified the game, I think.”

Thomas sank two of two free throws to make it a three-point game with 10.8 seconds left. Lewiston didn’t call a time out and had a good look at a game-tying 3 from Cody Dussault, but the shot was long and Jacques Larochelle rebounded and made one of two free throws to seal the game for the Rams.

Bangor hadn’t seen the court in four days and was playing without leading scorer Josiah Hartley, who was in Florida. Lewiston (4-2) had a practice late Monday night and a walkthrough Tuesday morning but came out flat for the game, not scoring a point the first 4:48 and going without a field goal until Osman hit a foul-line jumper with 11 seconds left in the first quarter.

Yet the Devils pounded the offensive glass (9-6 in the first half) and trailed by just five at the end of the quarter and by only one early in the second. Like the first quarter, they went deep into the second period without a field goal and turned the ball over 14 times in the half. Fortunately for Lewiston, the cold shooting was contagious, as Bangor shot 3-for-13 in the quarter and led by just six at the half.

The Rams missed eight of their first nine shots to start the second half, but the Devils failed to connect on their first four and six of seven overall while the deficit widened to eight heading into the fourth quarter.

Lewiston tried to speed up the tempo with full-court pressure, which Bangor handled well. The Rams started to get sloppy with the ball in the half court, though, committing 13 turnovers in the second half that allowed the Devils to chip away.

“We got the ball in the half court. We just made dumb passes,” Reed said. “We tried to thread the needle a few times and we dropped some good passes. But they played pretty hard defensively.”

McKinnon led Lewiston with six points, while Turcotte and Ricker added five apiece.

“That last quarter, I told the kids, if we play like that for 32 (minutes), I don’t think there is anybody that we couldn’t beat,” said Farrar, whose team’s other loss was to unbeaten Edward Little. “But it took us 28 minutes to get to that point.”