Boys Basketball: Lakers sail past Eagles, Clippers, advance to States

The Lakers – Nate Smith in the lead – turned their Thursday-night battle with Lincoln Academy into a textbook rout, executing well on all fronts, especially in the second half.

Smith’s 18 proved a game-high, and Lake Region’s 76-31 semifinals victory over the Eagles earned them a Saturday-afternoon Battle of the Boats with B South rivals Yarmouth. There, Smith again took the helm, tallying 17 and guiding the Lakers past the Clippers 53-43. Next stop: States.

Lake Region vs. Lincoln

Smith wasted no time putting No. 1 Lake Region on the board Thursday night. He needed all of nine seconds to lay in the Lakers’ first two points. He and Jack Lesure proceeded to assemble a 7-0 run, portending a terrible outcome for the Eagles – if they couldn’t get their feathers together.

Lakers head coach John Mayo was happy with the performance. “All year long, we’ve talked about, ‘You’ve got to play great defense, rebound, and we want to push the basketball,’” Mayo said. “Today we started off that way, got a quick start.”

“Nate, credit to him,” said Lesure, “He starts out a lot of big games for us, just knocks down the shots and gets us going right.”

They did, actually – at least for a few minutes. Riley Cushing, Taylor Holmes and Nathan Masters piled up enough of a run to tie the board at 7-7, momentarily creating the impression Lake Region had relaxed extremely prematurely.

No such luck for Lincoln, who entered the tournament the four-seed. The Lakers took their gloves off then, dragged the Eagles into the alley behind the Arena and pummeled them – not exactly mercilessly, but ably and methodically. Smith, Lesure, Tyler Walker, Alex Langadas and Marcus DeVoe assembled a 14-0 run to put their squad up 21-7, before they split 14 more with Lincoln to go to 28-14.

“They changed defense, called timeout,” Mayo said, referring to the Eagles’ early resurgence. “Things were feeling good and we didn’t share the ball enough, took the quick shot, kind of let them back in. But once we refocused, we ran off a bunch more, and everything kind of relaxed.”

Smith described the Lakers’ mentality: “Our focus, coming into the game, was defense. We pride ourselves on playing good defense.”

The score sat 33-18 at the start of the second half, and Lake Region only pried it open further from there. DeVoe found a particularly hot hand in the third, draining a three, another three, another three, and – wait for it – another three.

“The first half we were a little unfocused,” said Lesure. “All week we’ve been stressing defense, guarding the back-door cuts, but they were getting us in some of those. Coach got on us really bad at halftime, ‘We’ve got to play D, we’ve got to play D,’ and thankfully we did.”

Much of the Lakers’ roster saw the floor in the fourth, as Mayo checked out his starters once the game was clearly in hand, checking in some of the team’s other 11 seniors and its underclassmen, too. Lexus Rodriguez picked up four LRHS points in the home stretch, and Doug Mayo added seven: four frees and a crowdpleasing three. 76-31 the final.

“We do a good job of getting the person that’s feeling it the ball,” said Smith. “We try to have a whole-team environment; if Jack’s feeling it, we’ll get Jack the ball, if Marcus is feeling it, we’ll get him the ball. And our defense goes into our offense.”

Beyond Smith’s 18, Lesure and DeVoe both knocked down 14; Langadas added eight, Walker five, Nick Wandishin two, Tristen Chaine two and Damon Knight two as well.

“It was a good time,” Lesure said. “Coach, pre-game, says, ‘Have fun,’ just because, for 11 of us, this year is the last time we’ll ever step on the court together. We’re trying to make the most of it, but at the same time, we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.”

Lake Region vs. Yarmouth

The lead changed hands in this naval engagement roughly a million times, Lake Region and Yarmouth (ranked third) showing just why and how they’d split a pair of games in the regular season. Big work by Smith in the early going and Lesure in the late going, however, propelled the Lakers in sinking the Clippers 53-43.

“I expected a dogfight,” Mayo said. “They got us early, at the beginning of the year, at their place, and we got them at our place, and today, I knew, coming in, ‘They’re ready to play.’ They’re well coached. There’s some tough seniors there. I thought we were the best two teams in Southern B, and tonight was our night to be on top.”

DeVoe opened the scoring with a three. DeVoe, as noted, is a force downtown, and the early notch made it appear he might put up another fantastic performance. Alas, he never quite found his shooting groove – though as the game unfolded, he continued to provide solid rebounding, defense and ball movement.

Instead of DeVoe, Wandishin drained the next couple Lakers’ buckets, though the team was hardly pulling away. Clippers Nolan Hagerty, Bailey Darling and Aleksandr Medenica kept Yarmouth abreast of Lake Region as the game tumbled into the second quarter, early in which the scoreboard hit 9-9.

The Clippers inched ahead from there: Hagerty, Darling, Medenica and Musseitt M’Barack all added points, while Lake Region scrambled to not fall too far behind.

Down 18-11, the Lakers needed to battle back – and they did. Brandon Palmer turned a huge rejection, Smith added five points and Lesure added two (following a Wandishin d-reb), and suddenly things were all tied up once more, 18-18.

Down again, 22-19, with maybe nine seconds to play before the break, Lake Region converted a big, momentum-stealing play to surf into the locker room on: Alex Langadas pulled down a d-reb, charged to halfcourt and – unaware he had the time to get any closer to the basket – fired off a long, long, long three-point attempt. It didn’t fall, but Langadas kept on trucking, covering the distance between himself and the loose ball in what seemed like one giant stride. He pulled down that rebound, too, then drove home another deuce of Lakers points.

With 11 skilled seniors, the Lakers are deep. “We’ve got some guys that can play out there,” Mayo said. “We’ve got guys who don’t play as many minutes, who don’t start, that come off the bench, that are great players. A lot of weapons.”

The third careened to 23-23, then 28-28, then 31-31. With the home stretch approaching, Palmer sank a three for 35-35. A buzzer-beater by Darling might’ve juiced the Clippers, but the officials waved off the points, as Darling had committed an offensive foul on the drive.

Palmer hit another three to start the fourth. Medenica next added two from the line to keep things close, but that’s when Lesure started pulling fouls out of Yarmouth like cod out of the Georges Bank. He converted a three-point play, then found his way back to the line and nailed two more. It was Medenica’s fifth infraction of the night, and it sent him to the bench with more than half a quarter left.

Not long afterwards, Darling also fouled out, having knocked into Langadas. Down by seven and hobbled in a big way, the Clippers lost a bit of their cool; they airballed more than one three attempt and took a few other ill-advised chances as well. Lake Region pulled away for the W, 53-43.

Mayo remarked on the Clippers’ two foul-outs: “That relaxed some of our guys. It opened things up a little bit. Now they’re down two good players; they’re two we focused on. Darling’s a shooter, and Mendenica, he’s strong – he’s something else. He can shoot the three, go to the basket, post up.”

Smith finished the night with 17, and Lesure with 14 (he was 8-for-11 from the line). Palmer had six, Langadas five, Wandishin and Walker four apiece, and DeVoe the kickstarter three.

The Lakers will battle North reps Ellsworth at 8:45 p.m. on Friday the 26th at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor for the Class B State crown.

For more media, including video interviews with Lesure and Smith, visit www.keepmecurrent.com/sports.