AUGUSTA — With nine seconds remaining, the ball in the hands of one of the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference’s best shooters and a chance to tie, the Nokomis boys’ basketball team still didn’t have enough Wednesday night.
Zach Hartsgrove’s potential tying shot rimmed out, Medomak Valley’s Ryan Creamer tracked down the rebound, and the sixth-seeded Panthers came all the way back from a 16-point, second-half deficit to post a 49-44 win over No. 2 Nokomis in a Class A North semifinal at the Augusta Civic Center.
Nokomis opened its biggest lead, 40-24, when Josh Perry hit a 3-pointer late in the third quarter.
“I was pretty nervous,” said Medomak Valley Coach Nick DePatsy. “We just had to go to the smaller lineup. They were just killing us. It’s not that our bigs weren’t playing well, but we just didn’t match up well.”
Though it was the first trip to the regional semifinals in 15 years for Nokomis, it was the second straight season in which the Warriors coughed up a large lead at the Augusta Civic Center. They lost to Oceanside in the 2017 quarterfinals.
Creamer led Medomak (13-7) with 15 points – eight in the final quarter and four from the free-throw line in the final minute.
Josh Perry scored 11 points for Nokomis (13-7).
Medomak, which will play top-seeded Hampden Academy in the regional final on Friday, closed out the game with a 25-4 run over the final nine and a half minutes. The only Nokomis points were a pair of field goals by Brock Graves.
The Warriors turned the ball over four times and shot just 2 of 12 from the field during that stretch.
“Some turnovers hurt us in that stretch,” Nokomis Coach Ryan Martin said. “You’ve got to give Medomak credit. They went out and executed. They got some good looks and made them. They just kept chipping away, chipping away. There was no panic by them.”
Hartsgrove finished with seven points. He missed all six shots he took in the final quarter.
“(Christopher) Bowman and (Brandon) Starr gave us a huge boost off the bench defensively,” DePatsy said. “They really bothered Hartsgrove and (Josh) Smestad.”
“They did a really good job of chasing (Hartsgrove) around screens and knowing where he was all the time,” Martin said. “They were in his vision.”
Medomak sophomore Gabe Allaire finished with 12 points, including six in the fourth quarter. He also had seven rebounds.
“Allaire took over inside and hit some really, really big shots,” DePatsy said.
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