BANGOR — There are generally two types of smiles you see after tournament games at the Bangor Auditorium: Those from the winners, and those from teams that had great seasons and were satisfied to have gone as far as they did.
Gardiner and senior Jenna Moore don’t have to wear the second kind of smile just yet.
Gardiner played clamp-down defense, had a nicely balanced offense, passed well, and found the right shots in a 63-38 victory over Mt. Desert Island in an Eastern Class B girls’ basketball quarterfinal.
No. 4 Gardiner (17-3) advances to play No. 1 Presque Isle at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday. MDI, the No. 5 seed, finished at 15-5 with only one senior and three juniors.
Moore led the Tigers with 17 points, and Gardiner’s defense forced 30 turnovers and held the Trojans to 33 percent shooting.
“Anytime that you play a game, you can tell when your opponent’s getting frustrated,” Moore said with a smile. “It’s a good feeling.”
Sophomore forward Hannah Shaw (18 points, 10 rebounds) kept the Trojans close for as long as she could, but Shaw was the only MDI player to make more than one field goal.
Still, MDI made a few runs to get back into the game before Gardiner pulled away for good. The Tigers led 17-9 after one quarter, as Moore and Paige Pilsbury (10 points) scored 11 of those points.
When the Trojans closed that lead to 22-21 late in the first half, Moore and Pilsbury teamed up to score seven straight points, and Gardiner led 29-21 at the break.
Late in the third quarter, Kelsey Moody made an acrobatic three-point play, then knocked down a 3-pointer from the left corner on the next possession. Just like that, the Tigers led 45-31 after three quarters.
The Trojans looked like they would make one last charge when Shaw scored with 7:43 left to cut Gardiner’s lead to 45-34. But MDI wouldn’t make another field goal until Madeline Cook scored with three seconds to play. In between, Gardiner scored 17 straight points, as Moore, Kylee Granholm and Katie McAllister each made two baskets.
Granholm and McAllister finished with eight points apiece, and 10 Gardiner players scored.
“I thought we wore them out,” Gardiner Coach Mike Gray said. “They didn’t go as deep as we did. We had kids in and out. By the middle of the third quarter, we still had plenty of legs.”
“We go really deep in our bench, so it’s easier for us, because we don’t get tired as much,” Pilsbury said. “They had the same six players in all the time, and we were just rotating new legs.”
Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243
mdifilippo@centralmaine.com
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