They had survived foul trouble to a key player and were only down two points.

Gray-New Gloucester Coach Ian McCarthy looked at his players and knew they were ready to turn up the heat on Hampden Academy in the Class A boys’ basketball state championship game.

“You looked around in the locker room, you could see it in their eyes, they weren’t going to lose that game,” McCarthy said. “It was just a matter of time the shots were going to fall and we’d get the pace where we needed it. That’s what they’ve done all year. They wear teams down.”

Behind the shooting of leading scorer Nate Hebert and a 2-1-2 three-quarter floor zone trap that sped up the pace, the Patriots posted a 21-10 advantage in the third quarter and then survived a cold-shooting fourth quarter to win the program’s first state championship in nearly 50 years with a 52-41 victory Saturday afternoon at Cross Insurance Arena.

For the three Heberts, it was a team win and a family win. Nate’s father, Tom, is the grandfather of twins Aidan and Noah Hebert, making Nate his teammates’ uncle.

“We dreamt of this when we were little and this is everything to each and every one of us,” said Nate Hebert, who scored nine of his game-high 21 points in the third quarter. “We work harder than everybody. We take pride in it. All the nights we were hooping until 2 a.m., working out three, four times a day. … We worked really hard and we brought it.”

Gray-New Gloucester (20-2) was playing in its first state final since winning Class C in 1975. Hampden (19-3) was appearing in its ninth Class A final since Coach Russ Bartlett took over in 2004.

In the first half, Gray was hamstrung by Aidan Hebert’s foul trouble. The senior point guard and key defender – he was on Hampden star and Mr. Maine Basketball finalist Zach McLaughlin to start the game – picked up his third foul early in the second quarter.

Gray-New Gloucester was down 13-8 at that point, but responded well. Seven quick points from Nate Hebert and a bucket from John Patenaude (nine points) put the Patriots ahead, 19-15. Noah Hebert (eight points) switched onto McLaughlin, but that left powerful JJ Wolfington (14 points) to work against Gray reserves. Wolfington scored eight points in the second quarter and Hampden took a 24-22 lead to the halftime break.

“Aidan in foul trouble is never what we want, but we knew when he came back in he was going to bring it and we just had to hang on,” Nate Hebert said.

Gray-New Gloucester’s extended defensive pressure – with Noah Hebert and Carter Libby up top in the 2-1-2 and Aidan Hebert looking to set the trap at half court – sped up the pace to the Patriots’ liking and forced Hampden’s role players to take open shots that they missed, revving up the large Gray-New Gloucester student section.

“In the third quarter, we took two bad shots and both of them resulted in run-outs for them,” said Bartlett. “The game went from four (points) to close to 10, and in a game like this, being down 10 is a lot.”

A 10-0 run, which started with a Nate Hebert 3-pointer, created a 37-28 lead. With McLaughlin (10 points) struggling, Hampden tried to stay close, aided by a 3-pointer from Sawyer Worcester (nine points) and a basket from Aidan Kochendoerfer, but those baskets were answered by 3-pointers from Nate Hebert and Libby (nine points), the latter pushing the lead to 43-33 just before the third quarter ended.

The Patriots did not make a shot from the floor in the fourth quarter, but they sank 9 of 10 free throws and held Hampden to seven points.

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