Presque Isle Wildcats
Eastern Maine Class B champions
Presque Isle girls put clamps on Gardiner
By Larry Mahoney
Bangor Daily News
BANGOR, Maine — The second-seeded Presque Isle High School girls basketball team scored a season-low 47 points in Saturday afternoon’s Eastern Maine Class B championship game against the surprising Gardiner High School Tigers, the ninth seed who had upset previously undefeated top seed Mount Desert Island and fourth seed Camden Hills.
But it didn’t matter.
The Wildcats used a compact 2-3 zone to hold the Tigers to a season-low 24 points and senior forward Krystal Kingsbury had a memorable performance with 23 points and 13 rebounds to lead the Wildcats to their third EM title in four years.
Kingsbury eclipsed the 1,000-point mark for her career as she needed 21 points entering the game.
Presque Isle, now 19-2, will take on Greely of Cumberland Center in Friday night’s state final at Portland’s Cross Insurance Arena.
Gardiner finished 10-12.
Presque Isle opened the game with 11 unanswered points, six by Kingsbury and five by senior guard Hannah Graham, to take a lead it would never relinquish.
The Wildcats built the lead to 18-3 before Lauren Chadwick scored Gardiner’s first basket of the game with 1:40 left in the quarter.
Gardiner missed its first seven shots from the floor and wound up shooting just 19.1 percent on the day (9-for-47).
The Tigers closed out the quarter with seven straight points to pull within eight but the Tigers couldn’t get any closer than eight the rest of the way.
Still, the scrappy Tigers were only down by nine entering the fourth quarter but Presque Isle scored the game’s final 14 points and held Gardiner to just two points over the final eight minutes.
Gardiner scored just seven points in the second half.
“We had been a man-to-man (defense) team all year. I’d never played a 2-3 zone for a whole game. But they’re a tough team and we knew we had to stop them inside, get rebounds and play tough on them,” explained Kingsbury. “I am so proud of our team for holding them to seven points in a half. That doesn’t happen very often.”
“We knew they liked to slash to the basket and didn’t really like to take (outside) shots, three-pointers, like we do. So we knew if we packed it in in the middle (and forced them to shoot outside shots), we would have a good chance against them,” said Graham.
PI coach Jeff Hudson said his team turned in a “great effort” especially defensively and on the boards.
“(Gardiner) didn’t make enough outside shots and we were monsters on the boards,” said Hudson, whose Wildcats outrebounded Gardiner 36-25.
“They played really good defense and our shots weren’t falling,” said sophomore guard Chadwick, who led her team with 12 points and five rebounds.
“We picked a bad day to be off with our shots,” said Gardiner senior guard and tri-captain Morgan Carver. “We didn’t hit shots we usually hit. They’re a really good team.”
Sophomore forward Mary Toman said the Wildcats made it difficult for them to get the ball inside “and they got good position on the boards.”
Kingsbury had 14 of her points in the first half as she got good position along the baseline and in the paint and converted on seven of her eight shots.
“I definitely came out focused,” said the 5-foot-7 Kingsbury. “I really wanted to be tough inside and that’s what I did. I wasn’t taking ‘no’ for an answer.”
“She isn’t very tall but she gets very good position and makes her shots,” said Carver.
Graham had nine points, a game-high five assists and three rebounds for the winners. Five-foot-11 junior center Regan Nelson helped PI control the boards with six rebounds and four blocked shots to go with four points. Emily Lagerstrom had six points, six rebounds and two assists.
Carver finished with seven points, two rebounds and two steals for Gardiner and Toman had a team-high 10 rebounds.
