BANGOR — The Waterville girls, winners of 65 straight basketball games, looked vulnerable Saturday for the first time in the Eastern Class B tournament.
But thanks in large part to senior Morgan Frame, the Purple Panthers had more than enough wiggle room.
Frame was 16 of 21 from the field and finished with 36 points and 12 rebounds, and Waterville withstood John Bapst’s second-half comeback to take a 59-47 victory in the regional final at the Bangor Auditorium.
The top-seeded Panthers (21-0) move on to the state final against York on Friday in Portland. Second-seeded John Bapst, which handed Waterville its last loss in the 2006 tournament, ends its season at 19-3.
“We didn’t defend Frame,” Bapst Coach Mike Webb said. “It’s pretty much that simple. Other than that, we did our job defensively on everybody we wanted to. We broke down defensively on Frame.”
The Crusaders tried a man-to-man defense against Waterville in the first quarter, and Frame looked like a father playing against his 5-year-old son, scoring 12 points and making all of them look easy.
Waterville led 10-6 after a basket by Bapst guard Samantha Maquillan (11 points) with 3:48 left in the first quarter. The Purple Panthers scored the next 15 points, and the John Bapst didn’t make a field goal for 10 minutes, 29 seconds.
Waterville led by 24 at one point and settled for a 33-13 lead at the break, as Frame finished the half with 21 points, seven rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots.
While the Crusaders looked overmatched in the first half, they looked sublime in the opening minutes of the third quarter. Their run started with a free throw by Samantha Gormley (12 points), and included 3-pointers by Morgan Chasse (11 points) and Hillary Keith.
By the time Maquillan converted a three-point play, Bapst had scored more points in the first 2:08 of the third quarter than it did in the entire first half.
Waterville’s lead was down to 37-27 with plenty of time still to play. The Crusaders were scampering around and trapping Waterville’s guards in the front court, and the Panthers played like they were rattled.
“I thought they were pretty tired the first half,” Frame said. “I wasn’t expecting them to come out (like that). They were better then than they were at the beginning of the game. They played a great second half.”
Still, the Crusaders never figured out how to contain Frame, and she scored 10 points in the third quarter. Taylor Frame and Paige Gardiner hit open jumpers, and Waterville’s lead was 51-36 at the end of the quarter.
At that point, Waterville had its roughest stretch of the game. Morgan Frame and point guard Steph Whitten each picked up a fourth foul, and the Panthers turned the ball over seven times before finally making a field goal on a layup by Jen Nale (11 points) with 2:15 left.
“We started throwing the ball around, and (making) the mistakes that young players make that something looks open, but it’s not really open,” Waterville Coach Ted Rioux said. “But it’s impossible to think that 15-, 16- and 17-year-old girls aren’t going to make mistakes.”
Bapst got within nine points at 51-42 and 54-45, but couldn’t get any closer. With Frame on the bench, the Crusaders wanted to get the ball inside to the 6-foot-1 Gormley, but Waterville shut off that avenue by double-teaming her without the ball. Bapst couldn’t knock down its 3-pointers, and Waterville eased away at the free-throw line.
“We knew we could play with them,” Webb said. “We dug ourselves too big of a hole.”
Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243
mdifilippo@centralmaine.com
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