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OAKLAND — It has become a June tradition for the Messalonskee High School baseball team. When the regular season ends, the Eagles heat up.

The two-time defending Eastern Class A champions stumbled over the second half of the regular season, winning just three of their final eight games. On Wednesday afternoon, the Eagles got strong pitching and defense to go with timely hitting to take a 5-2 win over rival Lawrence in the regional quarterfinals.

“We’ve never had a good second half since I’ve been in high school, but playoffs come and we get into gear,” Messalonskee junior fist baseman Zach Mathieu said.

Messalonskee (12-5), the No. 2 seed, will host No. 3 Oxford Hills (12-5) at 2 p.m. on Saturday at Thomas College, in a rematch of last season’s regional final. No. 7 Lawrence ends the season at 8-9.

“I think we’re playing our best baseball right now. Too bad we didn’t have another week or so to keep playing,” Lawrence coach Rusty Mercier said.

Mercier’s Bulldogs took a 1-0 lead in the first inning. Cody Martin led off with a single, stole second base and scored on Joe Leclair’s double to center.

Messalonskee answered with two runs in the bottom of the inning to take the lead for good. Jared Cunningham led off with a single and Devin Warren reached on an error. Mathieu reached on an error, scoring Cunningham, and Warren came home on Jake Dexter’s groundout to third base.

Responding immediately to Lawrence’s run was key, Messalonskee coach Ray Bernier said.

“I think it was really big, especially where, a lot of games late in the season we’d gotten behind early and we didn’t respond. That was huge,” Bernier said. “They showed they were ready to play, too. I was glad to see that.”

The Eagles added a run in the bottom of the third. Cunningham walked, stole second and went to third on a wild pitch before scoring on a Mathieu single. Mathieu had two hits and drove in two runs off Lawrence starter J.T. Nutting.

“(Nutting) threw a lot of curveballs to me. I was actually surprised he threw a fastball to me, because he didn’t throw one the last time he pitched to me,” Mathieu said.

The Bulldogs cut the deficit to 3-2 in the fifth when Martin (4 for 4) scored on a Derek Bowen single. Lawrence was aggressive on the bases in the inning, and it led to a rare double play. With runners on first and second base, Cole Robinson hit a grounder to shortstop. Cunningham went to second for a force out, and when Leclair rounded third and kept going, the Eagles threw him out at the plate to end the inning.

Messalonskee got the run back in the bottom of the inning when Trevor Gettig scored on Warren’s sacrifice fly to center.

The Eagles added an insurance run in the sixth on Connor Garland’s pinch hit home run to right field. Nutting allowed six hits and two walks while striking out three for Lawrence.

“He kept them off balance most of the game. We had a couple innings where we did a nice job getting out of jams,” Mercier said. “Unfortunately, early we had a few mistakes that hurt us.”

In playoff games the last two seasons, Bernier has used multiple pitchers. This time, Dexter went the whole way, striking out five and walking one with seven hits allowed.

“I was hoping we could get all seven (innings) from him. It was a gut feeling that we needed that from him. The way the end of the season was going, we needed his gamer (attitude). He did what we needed,” Bernier said.

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

[email protected]

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM