TOPSHAM

When you currently occupy the final playoff spot and have only two games left, one being against a team that may give you a run for your money for that spot, you have to devise a plan to hold on.

On Tuesday night, the Mt. Ararat High School girls basketball team (6-11), which sat at No. 9 in the Eastern Maine Class A Heal Point Standings, came up with a plan when it faced off against Lewiston (3-14), which was peering in at No. 10. A win for the Eagles meant securing the final playoff spot.

A 37-16 first half was more than enough to help the Eagles roll to a 55-36 “Senior Night” victory over the Blue Devils in Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference play, and though there is still work to do, Mt. Ararat can now exhale knowing it has accomplished the first major goal of the season — the playoffs.

“We just needed to come out hard,” senior Lindsey Cornelison said after the game. “We usually have a rough time in the first half, so we needed to come out hard. It was for the seniors, it was for everyone, it helped solidify our spot at No. 9. We really needed this.”

“Coming into it we had a chance and we stressed that,” Lewiston coach Lynn Girouard said about her team’s potential to swipe the final playoff spot from the Eagles. “It’s hard with all of these snow days. I mean we practiced once before this game, so it makes it hard when you’re trying to prepare for a game like this. Mt. Ararat came out with the intensity and we just didn’t match it.”

It wasn’t hard for the Eagles to get things rolling, dumping 13 points on the board before the Blue Devils had a chance, with Nikki Bradstreet hitting a pair of ‘3s’ that helped contribute to the damage.

Lewiston finally got on the board with 2:30 remaining when Gabrielle Barrett sunk two at the line, but the Blue Devils’ first field goal didn’t come until just more than a minute later when Alasia Branche took a step beyond the arc and let one fly for a 3-pointer.

The Eagles had no intentions of taking their foot off the gas pedal in the second, capturing a 20-9 quarter advantage to create a difficult situation for the Blue Devils going into the half. This time it was Sara Lamb that led the attack, scoring eight of her 10 points in the frame, including a trey that fell right as the clock fell below a minute.

“(Our plan) was to attack,” Eagles coach Andy Morris said. “One of the things that we realized is that we’re a different team now than when we played them before and it was an overtime win for us (43-38). We were thinking this game is like a championship game, because if we lost we may not get that preliminary game.

“A loss could have flipped us so we talked that ‘this is like a championship and you got to treat it like a championship game,’ and the girls stepped it up.”

Lewiston went to work in the second half, taking a 20- 18 edge to finish out the final two quarters, limiting the Eagles on the offensive front.

“We needed to box out, play better defense and take care of the basketball,” Girouard said in regard to her team’s performance in the first half. “We threw it around too much, we dribbled too much. We didn’t play our style of basketball.”

The Blue Devils’ performance at the charity stripe in the second half pushed along the offense, dropping 7-of-12 to add to the six total field goals. However, another Bradstreet 3-pointer with four minutes to play took the air out of Lewiston’s tires.

“We just need to finish,” Cornelison said. “That’s our big thing. We’re a young team and we just need to go out there and get it done.”

Though Lewiston’s chance at the postseason may have ended, Girouard says that Tuesday’s loss has its benefits.

“We just build on it,” she said. “We learn from our mistakes and just move forward. You can’t dwell on the bad games, you have to look at the positives.”

The Eagles will face rival Brunswick on Thursday (5 p.m.) in a game that has potential to determine final seedings, with a win possibly giving Mt. Ararat a home preliminary game next week.

“For now I’m just so proud of the girls,” Morris said. “Everything we tried to do, full-court, play 84 feet, they executed and did to the ‘T’ especially in that first half which was critical. Now we put that one behind and go on to Brunswick.”

Mt. Ararat 55, Lewiston 36

Lewiston — Kristina Blais 2-6-10, Emily Brochu 2-0-5, Morgan Eliasen 0-0-0, Amanda Swart 2-2-6, Gabrielle Barrett 2-2-6, Alasia Branche 2-0-5, Victoria Harris 0-0-0, Keileigh Belanger 0-0-0, Kasey Talarico 0-0-0, Skylar Guadette 1-0-2, Totals — 12- 10-36. Mt. Ararat — Sara Lamb 4-1-10, Eliza Hodge 1-0-2, Nikki Bradstreet 5- 0-13, Allison Melcher 3-0-6, Lindsey Cornelison 6-2-14, Lauren Sturgess 1-2-4, Kate Guerin 3-0-6, Taylor Wienckowski 0-0-0, Katelyn Cox 0-0- 0, Lauren Labbay 0-0-0, Ashley Parker 0-0-0, Totals — 23-5-55. 3-point field goals — (L) Branche, Brochu; (MtA) Bradstreet 3, Lamb. Records — Mt. Ararat 6-11; Lewiston 3-14. Up next for the Eagles — Thursday at Brunswick, 5 p.m.