By Sam Canfield, BDN Staff
Powered by 16 third quarter points from senior guard Hunter Hartsgrove, the No. 7 Katahdin girls basketball team upset senior Lilly Roy and No. 3 Wisdom 42-34 in the Class D North regional semifinals Thursday morning at the Cross Center in Bangor.
Down 15-12 at halftime, the shots finally started falling for the Cougars, who took a 33-24 lead over the next eight minutes and never looked back. It was Katahdin’s third consecutive postseason win this February, crushing No. 10 Stearns in the preliminary round and No. 2 Central Aroostook in the regional quarterfinals by 30-plus points each.
The Cougars of Stacyville will play the winners of No. 1 Southern Aroostook and No. 4 Jonesport-Beals on Saturday at 2:45 p.m. The Wisdom Pioneer of St. Agatha finished the season 14-6.
Matching up with 5-foot-11 Hartsgrove was Wisdom’s 1000-point scorer Lilly Roy, who poured in a game-high 23 points of her own, including two 3-pointers and 5-for-5 shooting from the free throw line. Hartsgrove countered with two 3-pointers, eight offensive rebounds and four steals, finishing with 21 points on Thursday morning.
Roy will be playing basketball at Husson University next winter and Hartsgrove will be playing at Central Maine Community College.
“She’s a really good player. We’ve actually gone to basketball camps together, so I know her pretty well,” Hartsgrove said of Roy. “I wasn’t really worried about my points, I just wanted to win and my team wanted to win. We earned it; it feels great.”
Katahdin’s relentless trap defense tallied 13 total steals on the day, and limited the Pioneers’ scoring to just Roy and standout sophomore guard Ava Lerman (11 points, two 3-pointers, two assists, seven steals).
The Cougars’ will to win also showed in their tenacity down low, as sophomore forward Ayanna Lester (nine points, four steals) and senior guard Shelby Libby (seven points, two assists, two steals) combined for seven offensive rebounds in addition to Hartsgrove’s eight.
In comparison, Wisdom finished with eight offensive rebounds, including two from sophomore forward Kelsie Daigle and three from freshman guard Emma Soucy.
“We’re really starting to play. Our defense has really tightened up,” Katahdin head coach Shawn McAvoy said. “Hunter’s just an amazing player, and she’s not selfish. We’ve got another 32 minutes to go [until the state final], and we just gotta play one quarter at a time.”
