No. 11 Wells mounts comeback, stuns unbeaten Spruce Mountain

PORTLAND — After falling behind 12-0 and trailing 19-9 after one quarter against an unbeaten and heavily favored Spruce Mountain squad on Monday, Wells girls basketball coach Don Abbott had a simple message for his under-siege team:

“I just told them that they played a fantastic quarter right there and I’m not sure they have three more of those left in them, so let’s just kind of stay the course,” he said. “We don’t have a 12-point play in our arsenal, so let’s just chip away one possession at a time.”

The Warriors took that advice to heart, efficiently chipping away to trail by just four at halftime and then using an 11-0 run to end the third quarter to take a 36-30 lead after three.

Spruce Mountain attempted a comeback of its own, cutting the lead down to one late, thanks to numerous Wells missed free throws, but the Warriors held their nerve just enough at the end to shock the third-seeded Phoenix 43-42 in a Western Class B quarterfinal at the Portland Expo.

The victory leaves the 11th-seeded Warriors as the lowest remaining seed still alive in the state.

“I think at first we were just a little overwhelmed and nervous playing on this court,” said junior guard Nicole Moody. “But after we figured it out we settled down and started playing the kind of basketball we can play. We buckled down and started playing defense.”

After allowing 19 points in the opening eight minutes the Warriors defense did tightened, forcing 13 turnovers and conceding just 11 points across the second and third quarters.

“Our defense is our strong point and we shut them down,” said junior forward Sophie Lamb. “We just said even if we’re not making shots we’re going to shut them down and we’re going to win, and that’s what we did.”

And after turning the ball over nine times and scoring just three points in the opening six minutes Wells also got it going on the other end, pounding the ball inside despite a packed-in Spruce Mountain 2-3 zone as 18 of the Warrior’s 19 first-half points came from in the paint.

Spruce Mountain got the lead back up to 30-25 in the third, but four of Alison Furness’s 11 points and a pair of free throws from Jordan Agger (11 points, 10 rebounds) gave Wells its first lead of the game with 1:59 to play in the third, which they’d extend to six by the end of the quarter.

Wells clung on to that lead throughout the fourth and led by three with 1:24 to play, but couldn’t put the game away at the charity stripe, missing five of six free throws to allow Spruce to get the game within on a Nicole Hamblin 3 with 21 seconds left.

Lamb hit one of two free throws to extend the lead to two, and the Phoenix’ resulting possession resulted in a traveling call. Agger was then fouled, and after missing her first on an airball hit the second to make things 43-40 with 8.9 seconds on the clock.

“I give Agger credit,” Abbott said. “She airballed her first one after everybody missing them, and then she hit one to push it to three at least. Even going from two to three was big.”

Huge, as it would turn out. Despite having a timeout in his pocket Spruce Mountain coach Gavin Kane decided to let his team play the game out, which backfired when Emily Keene, instead of going for a tying 3, inexplicably drove the ball into the paint and threw up a wild shot. Sam Richards grabbed the rebound and put it in as time expired, but the two wasn’t enough as the Warriors hung on to hand the Phoenix (18-1) their first defeat of the season.

Though just 8-11 coming in, Abbott said he thought the Warriors’ tough Western Maine Conference schedule, compared to the Spruce’s relatively light Mountain Valley Conference slate, helped make the difference.

“I do think those wars every night, we’re battle tested in that sense,” he said. “That helped us keep our composure when we were down 12. We just said ”˜OK, let’s circle the wagons a little bit and get ourselves back to doing what we do well.’”

A semifinal-round showdown with rivals York now looms for the Warriors, who at 3 p.m. Thursday will become the first-ever Wells basketball team, girls or boys, to play on the floor of the Cumberland County Civic Center.

The second-seeded Wildcats (17-2) won both regular-season go-arounds, including a 10-point win in Wells Feb. 7, but after back-to-back playoff upsets it’s clear the Warriors fear no team.

“No one expects us to beat these teams, that just gives you that much more motivation,” Moody said. “We love going in as the underdog and having no one expecting us to win.”

“We thought just winning the prelim was a pretty big deal just to get this team of 13 girls who are all coming back (next year) on to the Expo floor, now we think it’s a pretty big deal to get across town to the Civic Center floor,” Abbott added.

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