FARMINGDALE — Carrabec High School senior Emma Pluntke attempted eight free throws in Tuesday’s Western Class C preliminary round at Hall-Dale. The first seven bounced off the rim and out, at angles only a geometry teacher could love.

Pluntke’s eighth foul shout, though, that’s the one she and the Cobras will remember for a long time.

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Pluntke’s final free throw cam with one second left in the game, and was true. It gave No. 9 Carrabec (12-7) a 38-37 come-from-behind win over No. 8 Hall-Dale (10-9) and propelled the Cobras to the Western Class C quarterfinals, where they’ll face No. 1 Maranacook (15-3) on Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. at the Augusta Civic Center.

“I was just thinking ‘I have to make these.’ I heard my coach (Skip Rugh) say I had to bend down more, so I focused on that,” Pluntke said.

With the game tied at 37-37, Carrabec called timeout with seven seconds left. At that point, Rugh was thinking at worst, the game was going to overtime.

“Hopefully, we can just get a good shot here, which we didn’t, but we were lucky Emma got the ball,” Rugh said. “Emma kept her mental toughness going. She did what she needed to do. She practices (free throws) all the time, and before we came here, she was hitting them left and right. She made it when it counted.”

Hall-Dale took a 37-34 lead with 1:50 to play, when Thea Sweet sank a foul shot. Mickayla Willette answered with an old fashioned three point play to tie the game with 1:35 left. Willette, the game’s high scorer with 25 points, fouled out on an offensive foul with 1:01 remaining, leaving the Cobras without their top offensive player for the final minute.

“Just keep playing. We didn’t think about the score. We had to just keep playing basketball,” Willette said.

The Bulldogs took their biggest lead of the game early in the fourth quarter, when Eva Shepherd made a 3-pointer to give Hall-Dale a 34-27 cushion. Willette made a three to cut Carrabec’s deficit to four points, and freshman Bailey Dunphy made back-to-back jumpers to tie the game at 34-34 with four minutes left in the game.

Throughout the game, Carrabec’s defensive focus was preventing Hall-Dale’s guards from penetrating the lane.

“Their guards are extremely fast. So we had to cut off their drives. We dropped into our zone a lot to stop those drives and make them shoot outside,” Willette said.

While the Bulldogs did have some success being aggressive, throughout the second half, they were patient, and at times it worked. Hall-Dale made five 3-pointers.

“We started to play their guards fairly well, compared to the last game. They started hitting some threes, which opened the game up a little for them,” Rugh said. “We did struggle with that high screen. They did a good job setting that, but defensively we did a good job.”

Hall-Dale led 22-20 at the half, and the teams traded the lead three times in the third quarter before Hall-Dale pulled ahead 31-27 with a Thea Sweet 3-pointer in the final minute of the quarter. Sweet led the Bulldogs with 10 points.

Pluntke grabbed 14 rebounds for the Cobras.

Travis Lazarczyk — 861-9242

tlazarczyk@centralmaine.com

Twitter: @TLazarczykMTM

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