PORTLAND – Things looked great for about three

minutes.

Then the tidal wave hit.

Eighth-seeded Gray-New Gloucester opened their

Class B quarterfinal round at the Portland Expo on Feb. 19 against

top -seeded Greely by going shot-for-shot against the Rangers, and

after three minutes, the Patriots (11-9) only trailed 11-8. This

was no mean feat in of itself considering that the last time the

two teams met on Feb. 8, Greely had routed the Patriots by a final

score of 91-42. But that game’s surge had come in the third quarter

as Greely outscored the Patriots 35-7. This time the hammer fell

even earlier.

Knowing that his team had manhandled Gray-New

Gloucester with the long ball before, Greely (17-2) senior guard

Sam Johnston took a pass, noticed he was momentarily unguarded, and

swished a 3. Seconds later, junior guard Liam Maker made a steal

right under the Gray-New Gloucester net and hit a bucket. Patriot

senior guard Nicholas Bennett replied with a 3 of his own to make

it 16-11, but the Rangers pushed the spread right back out to eight

when Maker struck again, this time from outside the arc.

It was the beginning of a 36-19 run by Greely,

and the Rangers didn’t let up on the pedal until the third quarter.

By then the Patriots trailed 47-27, and although they briefly cut

the lead to as close as 16 when senior guard Josh Faraynez hit a 3

with 4:26 left in the fourth, Johnston answered by scoring five

more, and the status quo of a 20-plus point lead was restored. It

was all part of Johnston’s game-high 31 points, as the Rangers

rolled, topping Gray-New Gloucester 78-56.

“(My guys) played very well in the first

half,” said Greely Head Coach Ken Marks. “I was looking for them to

come out with intensity and with focus, and I thought they did that

from the beginning of the game. It slipped a little bit after the

half. We scored a bunch of points in the first half, but we also

gave up too many. One versus eight; there’s always a lot of

pressure there, so it’s nice to get this thing under our

belts.”

The Patriots dropped their final two regular

season games against Greely and Yarmouth, and were forced to win in

the preliminary round against Maranacook on Feb. 15. This they

handled with relative ease, dropping the Black Bears 61-36, and

setting up an encounter with Greely that they hoped might turn out

better than the previous time.

Instead, the Patriots trailed by as much as

47-22 late in the second, and only closed the gap slightly when

freshman Samuel Johnson it a 3 with 1:25 to go. The Patriots nabbed

another basket in the closing seconds to make it a 20-point

halftime deficit.

“You don’t come to the tournament just to

play; you come to win,” said Gray-New Gloucester Head Coach Tony

DiBiase. “So the idea (at the half) was, hey, you’ve gotten through

that first half, now let’s cut it to 10. And in that second half

they really didn’t miss a shot. They play like that and nobody is

going to beat them. So, like I said, they hung in there, cut it

down, and they had a wide open look that could have made it

interesting (in the third). But I was proud of the way they

played.”

The “look” DiBiase was referring to happened

halfway through the fourth. Gray-New Gloucester had kept the

Rangers from widening the lead further since the half, but hadn’t

made a real move to close the distance, either. Down 66-47,

Faraynez lined up a 3 and buried it, cutting the lead to

significantly under 20 for the first time since midway through the

second. A note of alarm appeared to enter Marks’ body language, and

he quickly reinserted Johnston, who had been on the bench for much

of the period. Johnston hit a layup on the next possession, and

although the Patriots had some excellent looks at additional

3-pointers over the course of the next minute, it was the Rangers

who hit their shots, the most important coming at 3:25 when

Johnston completed a 3-point play, making it 71-52. Both teams sent

in their benches moments later.

“I was proud of the way the kids hung in

there,” DiBiase said. “We actually cut the lead down to 16 and then

got an open look and missed a 3. But I think that very obviously

they (Greely) are the best team in the tournament. This would have

been a tough matchup for anybody. But I thought the kids hung in

there very well and played tough, especially in the second

half.”

The Patriots are losing five seniors this

spring to graduation, and while the team is returning an equal

number of juniors, DiBiase expects that Gray-New Gloucester will

have a very different appearance come next winter.

“We had a very competitive freshman team, with

a lot of good talent,” he said. “And we a very competitive junior

team. We also have both point guards back. Most of these kids were

new this year anyway, except Josh and Adam (Jensen), so you never

know.”