Despite a heroic effort from fourth-seeded Deer Isle-Stonington’s Macey Brown, the Mariners fell to the first-seeded Southern Aroostook Warriors 55-26 in the Class D North semifinals on Wednesday night at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor.
Southern Aroostook now advances to play No. 2 Wisdom in the Class D North regional championship game Saturday at 9 a.m.
Brown’s play kept the game close as the halftime whistle blew, scoring 14 points in the opening half for the Mariners.
For the Warriors, Madison Russell and Cami Shields carried the load, dropping 20 and 16 points on Deer Isle-Stonington, respectively.
The Mariners kept the score close thanks to Brown’s shooting, entering halftime down only nine points. If not for a flurry of turnovers and fastbreak points accrued by the Warriors before the break, the gap could have been as small as three at the midpoint.
“You’ve just gotta weather the storm, right?”, Southern Aroostook head coach Cliff Urquhart said after the game.
“To start the game sometimes it doesn’t go as planned, and you’ve gotta keep grinding. I told them that we just needed to win the ‘war of attrition.’”
Urquhart’s side did more than that, stifling every Mariner offensive combination.
Cami Shields wrangled in three steals, adding onto a stellar shooting performance.
Brown scored 22 of the Mariners’ 26 total points, recovering from a dry spell that spanned the entirety of the third quarter and the first half of the fourth.
