PORTLAND — Amid the screams of a fourth quarter thriller Thursday night at the Cross Insurance Arena, the Wells Warriors retained their focus to overcome Spruce Mountain in the last eight seconds of the Class B boys basketball semifinals., 53-52.

Wells had been playing catch up since they fell behind 22-20 early in the second period, finally tying 47-47 with six minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, tying layup brought to you by Wells’ Matt Sherburne.

Sherburne scored the fourth-highest total points for Wells in this game at six. Owen Berry led the pack, pulling down 15 points during the semifinal, Tyler Dewey brought in 12 pts., and Cameren Cousins earned eight points.

Roughly only five minutes elapsed between the 47-47 tie and the next 50-50 tie between Wells and Spruce Mtn., but time felt stretched beyond normal limits with the attention of so many people saturating the room.

The heavy work in the fourth quarter was done for Spruce Mountain by Austin Darling and Parker Caulin, Caulin pulling in the last five points of the game for what was almost a Spruce Mtn. win. Darling and Caulin’s strength was visible thoughout the game as well. Darling led Spruce Mountain with 15 total points and Caulin created 14 pts. Spruce Mtn.’s Noah Preble earned 12 pts.

After Caulin’s three-pointer broke the tie to 50-47, Cameren made a successful freethrow for 50-48. Wells’ Deandre Woods made a layup to bring Wells to an even 50-50 score, and with 1:16 remaining in the fourth, a 50/50 chance either team could win.

Following a foul by Darling, Riley Dempsey made a freethrow with the clock frozen at 0:44, to score 51-50. If Wells had held on to the ball at this point, this would be a less satisfying story, but in 20 seconds Spruce Mountain’s Caulin made his last layup to score, 52-51, Spruce ahead.

Wells took a timeout with only 17 seconds remaining. What the Wells coach said during that last talk was evidently magically motivating, because nine seconds after the timeout, Owen Berry jumped and propelled Wells into the Regional Finals with one ball and two points, 53-52.

Wells head coach Troy Brown, glowing from the postgame peptalk with his team, said, “Probably the gutsiest performance I’ve ever seen from a basketball team. Down 11 at halftime, we’re standing three ball after three ball from them and relentless – they never stopped working for the ultimate goal to win the basketball game. They never gave up on each other, they never gave up on their community, and they never gave up on us coaches. I couldn’t be any prouder. Even if we lost the game, we were relentless. We never stopped giving everything that we have.”

Spruce Mountain’s head coach, Scott Bessey, was understandably less enthused. Bessey said, “We’re all devastated. We’ve got a bunch of good seniors on the team that have been building for this night for four years. We got here, we had a good chance to win it. For it to come down to the wire like that and for them to be on the short end is going to be pretty devastating for a while.”

The Class B South boys Regional finals are scheduled for 2:45 p.m. on Sat., Feb., 25 at the Cross Insurance Arena.