Max Chabot drove the length of the court and put in a layup just before the final buzzer to give Deering a 49-47 win against South Portland on the final night of the Class AA boys’ basketball regular season Thursday.

The winning basket came after Jack Fiorini converted an offensive rebound at the other end with 5.6 seconds left.

“We put ourselves into a position where we had to come out of a timeout and execute a play,” Deering Coach Todd Wing said. “We’ve gone over that play many times in practice, so we know how much time we need to run it.”

“We had a couple of different options,” said Chabot, a senior guard who led the Rams with 10 points. “If I had the lane, I was supposed to take the shot, and luckily they gave me the lane.”

South Portland Coach Kevin Millington said his player were anticipating a pass by Chabot.

“We figured they were going to penetrate the lane and then dish it to one of their scorers,” Millington said. “In our kids’ defense, they were kind of … waiting for (Chabot) to pass. The sea just parted and he made a great play and scored.”

Ruay Bol, a 6-foot-4 junior guard, scored 16 points for South Portland. Fiorini finished with 12.

The outcome didn’t affect the seeding of either team for the Class AA tournament that starts next Thursday.

Deering (16-2) will go into the Class AA North tournament as the second seed and will get a bye into the semifinals. South Portland (9-9) will be the No. 4 seed in the South and will likely face Sanford in the quarterfinals.

“The game didn’t mean anything in the Heal points,” Millington said. “For us to be able to compete like that and take a state-championship-contending team down to the wire was a plus. It will give us momentum going into the tournament.”

The Red Riots put together a 10-1 run in the fourth quarter to wipe out a nine-point deficit.

“That was really big for us because we’ve struggled against good teams in the fourth quarter,” Millington said. “Every game we’ve lost, we’ve been in, either winning or tied going into the fourth quarter, and we’ve lost some of those games by double digits.”

Deering got off to a slow start but then ripped off 12 straight points to open up a 14-7 lead in the first quarter.

South Portland closed the gap to 24-20 on Fiorini’s tip-in with 10 seconds left in the first half.

Deering, which cruised to a 66-46 win against the Riots on Jan. 8 in South Portland, carried a 38-29 lead into the fourth quarter.

“In the end, I think our experience and our toughness came through,” Wing said. “You don’t want to go out on a bad note. You want to get a chance to see who you are and get something out of it, and we got that tonight.”

“It was a great way to end the (regular) season,” Chabot said. “I wish we could have played a little bit better. The game was a little too close for us. We wanted to win by a lot more, especially on Senior Night, but it’s still nice to get the win.”

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