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AUGUSTA — The Spruce Mountain girls basketball team leaned on a strong defense throughout the Class C South final Saturday night.
The Phoenix sealed the title with a strong offensive finish.
Spruce Mountain, the No. 1 seed, scored 22 points in the fourth quarter to run away with a 51-29 victory over No. 3 Wells in the regional championship game at the Augusta Civic Center. The Phoenix will play in the state final for the first time since 2023, when they won Class B South.
Spruce Mountain (20-1) will meet Mattanawcook Academy at 7 p.m. next Saturday in Augusta. The Lynx (21-0) beat Foxcroft Academy 41-22 in the North title game.
Junior forward Maddie Grimaldi led the Phoenix with 21 points and nine rebounds. Sophomore guard Lily Bellerose added 12 points and five rebounds, and junior guard Natasha McDonald scored 10 points.
“It feels so good,” Grimaldi said. “There’s no better feeling.”
Senior guard Payton Fazzina paced Wells (18-3) with 15 points and five rebounds, while senior forward Megyn Mertens added eight points.
“From wire to wire, that’s as good as we’ve done (defensively),” Spruce Mountain coach Zach Keene said. “We’ve had a quarter here and a quarter there where we’ve dominated. You could feel how locked in they were from the tip. It came at a good time.”
Wells was the only team to beat Spruce Mountain in the regular season, 44-36 on Jan. 9. On Saturday night, the Phoenix shut the Warriors down from the start, allowing 14 points in the first half and three in the third quarter.
“We knew they had a lot of good scorers, a lot of people who could contribute,” Bellerose said. “We really locked in (on defense) and made that something we really needed to focus on and execute, and knew that’s what it would take to win.”
The confidence on defense transitioned to the offensive side for Spruce Mountain, particularly in the fourth quarter. Grimaldi scored 11 of her 21 points in the fourth, knocking down two 3-pointers. Sophomore guard Alaina Kachnovich came off the bench in the fourth and quickly hit two 3-pointers to help Spruce Mountain pull away.
“We feed our energy off how we’re doing on defense,” Grimaldi said. “When we’re getting those turnovers, when we’re getting those steals, getting those blocks, all of this momentum and get excited, and it just leads to great offense.”
Added Keene: “At the end of the day, big time players make big time plays in big time moments. They care about it, they live for it. They’re basketball junkies. They want these moments. There’s no doubt that we’d play with the energy we did. It was just a matter of if we were going to make shots.”
The Phoenix finished 20 of 40 from the field and 4 of 5 from the free-throw line.
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