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BANGOR — With 29.3 seconds left Friday night, Aaron Toman knew his team was almost there.

Gardiner was leading Cony by 11 and about to shoot free throws. The Tigers’ eighth-year coach turned to his bench, knowing his team had finally slammed the door in the Class B North boys basketball final.

“I just told them, ‘Can you taste it?’” Toman said. “That feeling of winning a game is just super important, and it’s important to have a team that believes for that whole 32 minutes. … You never know you’ve truly got it, but we were pretty excited about the possibility that we had it wrapped up.”

They could taste it then and still can following an 80-71 win over their biggest rival at Cross Insurance Center. The victory sends the Tigers to the state final next Friday night, back in Bangor, against South champion Yarmouth (17-4).

Brady Atwater scored 27 points for third-seeded Gardiner (18-3), which controlled the game after the No. 1 Rams jumped out to a 5-0 lead. Brady Peacock added 16 points for the Tigers, and Trace Moody scored 12, all on 3-pointers.

“It’s just a rush of different emotions,” Moody said. “This is a dream come true for all of us since we were in third grade. … We knew if we just played together and played as one that we would outlast them.”

Moody and Atwater sparked a first-quarter surge. Moody hit two 3-pointers and Atwater scored seven points to put the Tigers up 19-13. Atwater then erupted for 12 points in the second quarter as Gardiner stretched its lead to 47-35.

Cony (18-3), which would have been in an even bigger hole if not for an 18-point second quarter from Carter Brathwaite (32 points), hung around in the second half, getting as close as six points. Yet with Gardiner up 67-59 late, a 7-0 run fueled by a Moody 3-pointer powered the Tigers to the finish line.

“With a team like Cony that’s super talented, super skilled and well-coached, they’re never truly out of the game,” Toman said. “We were able to withstand their runs and make plays on both sides of the ball, and I think part of that was an even-keeled mindset — not too high, not too low.”

Parker Morin (16 points) and Jackson Kay (11 points) both picked up two early fouls for Cony and had to sit for much of the first half. Morin was the Rams leading scorer in playoff wins over Presque Isle and Ellsworth, and Kay is an outstanding 3-point shooter and rebounder.

“It hurts tremendously when you have two guys that are key parts of your team that go down early, but we just never quit on ourselves; we stayed 10 toes on the ground and kept moving forward,” said Cony coach Isaiah Brathwaite. “It didn’t end up the way we wanted, but it was still a great season.”

For Gardiner, the regional championship is the second in program history. The Tigers’ only other regional triumph came in 2012 when they topped previously undefeated Mount Desert Island to win Eastern Class B.

Toman, a senior on that team, knew this Gardiner team had the mettle to make it back. The Tigers returned the bulk of a 2024-25 team that made the Class B North tournament, and they were the runner-up to Class A North champion Camden Hills in a summer league at Cony.

“He had the same moment growing up in high school, and he knew our group could accomplish the same thing,” Atwater said of Toman. “This was one of the most fun games I’ve ever been a part of; it was so energetic. It was just awesome.”

A regional title win is always sweet, but doing it against Cony makes it even sweeter, said Moody. The teams split their regular-season series, Gardiner winning 97-90 on Dec. 27 at the Augusta Civic Center and Cony edging the Tigers at home, 75-69, on Jan. 22.

Now comes Yarmouth, which defeated Medomak Valley 63-58 to win the South championship. Gardiner lost to Yarmouth in the 2012 state final, and the Tigers would love nothing more than to get some revenge for their coach.

“He’s the heart and soul of this program, and we’re just all glad that we could be a part of it with him on this championship run,” Moody said. “We just have to play our game. We don’t know much about Yarmouth, but we’ll come prepared.”