enlarge Joe Phelan/Staff Photographer

Madison's Margo Russell, left, and Lacey Ashbrook cut down one of the nets after the top-ranked Bulldogs edged Monmouth Academy 37-34 in the Western Class C championship game Saturday night at the Augusta Civic Center. The Bulldogs will play Lee Academy for the state title.

AUGUSTA -- Her face red as a beet, Briann Emery ran her fingers through the basketball net that hung around her neck.

"I'm going to sleep with it on tonight," said Emery, a senior forward on the Madison girls' basketball team. "I'm not going to take it off."

Standing a few feet from Emery was 5-foot-10 senior center Margo Russell, whose 12 points and eight rebounds helped the top-ranked Bulldogs edge No. 2 Monmouth Academy 37-34 to win the Western Class C title Saturday night at the Augusta Civic Center.

"I've been watching high school basketball forever and I wanted to experience this," she said. "I wanted to feel what it was like."

The Bulldogs, who survived a late Monmouth rally in a wild final two minutes, will play Eastern Maine champ Lee Academy (18-3) on Saturday for the state championship at the Augusta Civic Center.

It was hard to imagine that the fourth meeting between Madison and Monmouth this season could be as good as the previous three, which included a buzzer-beating shot by Russell in the Mountain Valley Conference championship game.

But it was.

In front of a raucous crowd, including two rowdy student sections that traded chants all night, the Bulldogs used a box-and-one defense to shut down Monmouth guard Jenn Lola, who scored seven points in the first quarter but was held to just four the rest of the way.

Emery, whose two points certainly won't stand out in the box score, guarded Lola from start to finish, denying her the ball with constant in-your-face pressure.

"We wanted to come out and shut her down as much as possible," Emery said. "Coach came up to me before the game and said, 'I want you to face guard her.' It was a lot of pressure, but I liked it. I just tried to annoy her the whole game."

And that's what she did. Lola, who torched the Bulldogs (20-1) for 28 points in a previous game, struggled to get into a rhythm after the first quarter. She did, however, have a chance to tie the game in the final eight seconds, but her 3-pointer was off the mark.

Seconds earlier, Jill Armstrong also had a chance to force overtime when she launched a 3-pointer, but the ball rimmed out. The Mustangs closed the game on a 13-3 run to pull within three in the final 30 seconds.

"It was really frustrating," Lola said. "The shots just didn't fall. I don't know what happened."

"It looked good going up," Monmouth Coach Rick Amero said about Lola's last shot. "Some nights, they fall. Tonight, they didn't. But in the third quarter it looked like we were going to get our doors blown off."

That's because Russell was making life difficult inside for the Mustangs. Using four players on the perimeter, the Bulldogs swung the ball around until they could get the ball down low to Russell or get an open look from the outside.

Lacey Ashbrook, who finished with nine points, sank a key 3-pointer with 3 minutes, 32 seconds left in the third quarter before Russell followed with a turnaround shot in the paint that gave the Bulldogs a 29-21 lead heading into the fourth. The Bulldogs opened the fourth with a 5-0 run to build their biggest lead of the night, 34-21. The inside-outside attack was just too much for Monmouth.

Still, the Mustangs clawed back, scoring six points in a 31-second span midway through the fourth. Two of those points came on a Lola layup with 3:04 left. It was her second and final field goal of the half.

The Mustangs pulled within 36-34 on a basket by Alyssa Morin with under a minute to go. But Danielle Hebert, who scored 12 points, sank her only free throw to make it 37-34 with 43 seconds to play.

The Mustangs had three chances to tie the game but couldn't get their last-second shots to fall.

"I was nervous," Hebert admitted. "We just couldn't let them get that 3-pointer."

Bill Stewart -- 623-3811, ext. 515
bstewart@centralmaine.com