Winslow’s Braden Rodrigue looks to make a pass while Presque Isle’s Brayden Castonguay (20) defends during a Class B North boys basketball quarterfinal on Friday at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor. Dave Dyer/Kennebec Journal
BANGOR — The Winslow boys basketball team had been nearly perfect entering the Class B North playoffs.
But on Friday night, Winslow’s hot streak ran cold.
Winslow, the No. 2 seed, fell 65-45 to No. 7 Presque Isle in a Class B North quarterfinal. Guard Malachi Cummings led Presque Isle with 27 points. The Wildcats (12-8) will play No. 3 Orono in the semifinal round on Wednesday.
“It’s great, I’ve never felt anything like it,” Cummings said. “First win here at the Civic Center. There’s nothing like it.”
Winslow ends it season at 17-2. Andrew Poulin led the Black Raiders with 17 points, while Jason Reynolds added nine points and 10 rebounds.
Both teams traded blows in the first quarter, with Winslow holding an early 16-14 lead. But a 9-0 run by the Wildcats between the first and second quarter, aided by a cold streak from Winslow — the Black Raiders scored just four points in the second quarter — gave Presque Isle a 23-20 halftime lead.
“(Presque Isle) did what we expected,” Winslow head coach Ken Lindlof said. “They executed perfectly. They made the plays when they needed to, and we didn’t. We picked the wrong time to play our worst game of the year, but that’s going to happen. You hope it doesn’t happen in a playoff situation, but it happened to us, and it was just uphill all the way.”
Winslow and Presque Isle traded leads early in the third quarter. But an 8-0 run gave the Wildcats a 42-34 lead entering the fourth quarter, and they never looked back.
Cummings said a key for the Wildcats defensively was shutting down Reynolds, the top scorer in the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference, averaging 28.8 points per game entering the contest.
“We’ve worked, we’ve grinded the last couple weeks, because we knew we had to kick it into gear after losses to Old Town and things like that,” Cummings said. “We went to practice. We knew we had to play good defense on (Reynolds), we knew we had to be up in his grill the entire game, limit his shots and make other people beat us.”
“I’m super proud of these guys,” Presque Isle head coach Dillon Kingsbury said. “These last three and a half weeks we’ve had a little bit of confidence and some mojo going on. It’s just awesome (to win). It’s just fun.”
Due to foul trouble on the part of Winslow, Presque Isle added 14 points off free throws in the fourth quarter to seal the game.
“We just couldn’t get (shots) to drop,” Lindlof said. “(Presque Isle) did a good job maintaining their poise against our pressure. Living on the free throw line and (they weren’t) missing many, and when they did, they got an offensive rebound. Everything went right for them. They earned it, it wasn’t like it was luck.”
It’s the first win this season the Wildcats have pulled on the Black Raiders. Winslow beat Presque Isle 64-55 on Dec. 10 and 58-40 on Dec. 29.
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