TOPSHAM — The rivalry on the hardwood between the Mt. Ararat and Brunswick basketball teams remains alive and well.
It was on full display in front of a packed gym on Thursday night, as the Brunswick girls basketball team held off a dramatic comeback attempt by Mt. Ararat to pick up a 44-38 victory. Forward Alexis Morin led the Dragons (7-1) with 14 points, while forward Dakota Shipley added 13 points.
“That was a tough game, probably one of the toughest games of the season,” said Morin, a junior.
Carli Pomerleau led the Eagles (6-2) with 15 points.
The girls game followed the Mt. Ararat boys basketball team rolling to a 51-29 win over Brunswick. Caleb Murphy led the way for the Eagles (2-4), scoring 13 points, while Logan Dubuc added 10 points.
Noah Gaghan scored nine points for the Dragons (1-5), while Trevor Gerrish had seven points and six rebounds.
Down 38-22 entering the fourth quarter, the Mt. Ararat girls outscored the Dragons by a 16-6 margin in the final period. Pomerleau, a junior, scored eight of her 15 points in the fourth quarter alone, and the Eagles managed to knock down three 3-pointers. With 1:57 left the game, the Eagles trailed the Dragons by four points.
“I’m very proud (of the team), I just wish we played with an edge right out of the gate,” Mt. Ararat head coach Julie Petrie said. “It’s disappointing to get into a hole that deep and then decide to get it together, because it’s too late at the end.”
Added Brunswick head coach Sam Farrell: “(Mt. Ararat) is a great team, they’re coached well. It’s a rival. (The game) was great, there was a packed house here.”
Though the Dragons scored six points in the fourth, they happened at key moments, including two free throws from Maddy Werner to held clinch the game.
“We just needed to take a breath, go head-on and play our game,” Morin said. “We don’t need to mix anything up. We just need to put (the ball) in the basket.”
In the boys game, neither team gained much ground, with Brunswick holding Mt. Ararat to a 16-15 halftime lead. But the Eagles stepped up by scoring 18 points in the third quarter, including eight from Murphy, to take a 33-26 lead. Mt. Ararat added 18 more points in the fourth to seal the win.
“Once the second (shot) went in (in the second half), I started to feel it a lot, it really starts to boost the confidence a lot when a few go in,” said Murphy, a junior guard.
“We knew in the first half that we just weren’t hitting our shots,” Mt. Ararat coach Dave Dubreuil said. “The message (to the team) was just to keep it close. We knew our defense would transfer over to the offense.”
The boys game was chippy throughout, with a combined 10 fouls between both teams in the first quarter and fourth quarter.
“We knew it was going to get physical that way, because (Brunswick) is much bigger than us,” Dubreuil said. “The message was just, ‘Hold your heads up, just keep playing and just kind of scrap it.’ We were just kind of scrappy and we slowed the game down.”
Added Murphy: “A lot of us know each other, so it gets chippy when we play each other. A lot of passion (is there). Everyone wants to win, no one wants to be the team to lose and hear the other team celebrate in the locker room.”
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