Winning is what all the work is for, Carter Galley said. The Oceanside High senior, along with his twin brother, Cohen, has led the Mariners to the cusp of what they just missed last season.

Friday night at Bangor’s Cross Insurance Center, Oceanside (21-0) gets a rematch against Orono (18-3) in the Class B state championship game. A year ago, Orono eked out a 61-58 win over the Mariners, holding off Oceanside’s furious rally late in the fourth quarter.

That loss triggered one of the most dominant regular seasons in Maine high school boys’ basketball history. The Mariners hope to cap it with the program’s first state championship. Rockland High, one of Oceanside’s predecessor schools, won a Class B title in 1992. Along with last season’s state final loss, Oceanside fell to Falmouth in the Class A championship game in 2016.

“It’s definitely been a big part of this team,” Cohen Galley said of the loss in last season’s final. “We definitely felt we could’ve won that game.”

The Mariners almost pulled off an all-time comeback. They trailed by 11 with 1:24 to play, but Carter Galley sank three 3-pointers while Orono went bitter-wind cold at the foul line, and the Mariners cut the deficit to two points with 5 seconds left.

Coming so close gave Oceanside an entire offseason to think of the little things that happened in the course of the game. If they make a defensive play here, or score one more bucket there, maybe the outcome would be different. After the game, Orono’s Ben Francis said the Red Riots thought they could exploit Oceanside’s lack of attention to defensive details.

The Mariners saw that comment after the game, Carter Galley said, and they knew Francis was right. The Red Riots fattened up on wide-open breakout layups, he said.

“Simple defensive errors cost us. We’ve got to get turnovers and we’ve got to communicate,” Cohen Galley said. “Defense has been a big part of practices.”

Oceanside Coach Larry Reed said he’s seen his team’s defense improve steadily throughout the season. Defense, Reed said, comes down to effort and desire.

“It took the mindset that we want to become the best defensive team out there,” Reed said. “Honestly, we just made the commitment to do it.”

Oceanside’s uptempo style has garnered a lot of attention, and rightly so. The Mariners averaged just over 90 points per game in the regular season. While their scoring has dipped in the playoffs (69 points per game) against stronger competition, the Mariners’ defensive intensity has not. Pressing and fighting for every rebound like the basketball is full of $100 bills, Oceanside allowed just under 42 points per game in the Class B South tournament.

“Our rotations have gotten much better. Our closing out on shooters has gotten much better, and we’re much better boxing out and getting rebounds,” Reed said. “And it showed in the South regionals.”

Led by the Galley brothers, the Mariners knew they could score. To attain the goal that was just out of reach last season, they knew they had to improve defensively. Carter Galley was recently named a finalist for Mr. Maine Basketball. Cohen Galley was a semifinalist, and was a finalist for the Fitzpatrick Trophy, awarded each year to the top senior playing high school football in Maine. The brothers push each other and their teammates, and this season, that means making defensive plays as much as anything.

“We’re very competitive. I think that’s why we are where we are,” Carter Galley said.

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