WELLS — It’s hard to beat a team three times in one season, so the saying goes.
The players on the Lake Region boys’ basketball team said it among themselves. And then they proved it.
Jacoby Bardsley scored 19 points, including a pair of clutch free throws. Matt Plummer and Jackson Libby each had nine – with Libby connecting on a go-ahead three-point play – and the 10th-seeded Lakers beat No. 7 Wells, 51-48, in a Class B South preliminary game on Tuesday.
“We talked to our principal today about this game, and she said that we needed to say out loud ‘We can do this. We can win,'” Bardsley said. “Because we all knew we can. We just had to actually do it.”
Lake Region (8-11) didn’t have the answers for the Warriors (9-10) in the regular season, falling by nine points in December and 17 last week. In the playoffs, however, the Lakers found a formula, and sealed their first trip to the Portland Expo for the quarterfinals since 2020.
The Lakers will face No. 2 Lincoln Academy at 5:30 p.m. Friday.
“We came into this game super confident. You’d hear guys saying before the game, it’s hard to beat a team three times,” Lakers Coach Ryan Martin said. “We think we’re just as good as this Wells team, and we are. These are two very evenly matched teams.”
Jeremy Therrien led Wells with 20 points, while Nolan Brown had nine.
“It’s just a tough way to go out,” said Therrien, a junior. “But it’s sports. It happens. It’s part of life. You accept it, you move on, then come back next year better than before.”
The distancing that took place on the scoreboard in previous games didn’t happen Tuesday, as neither team led by more than four until Aidan Roberts hit a 3-pointer to put the Lakers ahead 38-32 with 2:05 to go in the third. The Warriors fought back, however, and pulled even at 45-45 on a Therrien free throw with 1:21 to play.
Lake Region answered on its next possession, with Libby drawing a foul while making a short bank shot against a double team. He made the free throw, putting the Lakers ahead 48-45 with 55 seconds to go.
“I realized when I was on the line ‘Oh, I just did that. … I just put this away, kind of,'” said Libby, who led Lake Region with seven rebounds. “It kind of clicked in my mind. … We just had to keep stopping them. We didn’t want to lose to them three times in a row.”
The Lakers led the rest of the way. With 13.4 seconds left, Bardsley hit a pair of free throws to make it 50-46 and cripple the Warriors’ comeback hopes.
“I take 20 free throws at practice every day,” Bardsley said. “I’ve imagined that shot many times. I just took it and it went in.”
Wells had the ball down 51-48 in the closing seconds, but a missed 3-pointer gave the ball back to Lake Region.
Martin said the Lakers made adjustments from their previous matchups.
“They have two really good shooters, and we had a defense to make sure they wouldn’t get open looks,” he said. “We did a much better job of guarding their screens.”
Wells Coach Troy Brown praised his team’s effort and poise to rally back, but said some misses at the basket loomed large in the final minutes.
“It looked grim, but we stuck in there,” said Brown, who got 10 rebounds from Spencer Carpenter. “We would have loved to make a trip to the Expo. … My kids had their heart set on it.”
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