Central Aroostook girls
struggle in loss to Deer Isle
Sports Reporter
BANGOR — The Central Aroostook Panthers girls’ basketball team suffered through a nightmare shooting performance Thursday and the result was a surprising loss in the Eastern Maine Class D semifinals.
CA was a miserable 12 out of 57 on field goal attempts as Deer Isle-Stonington, the sixth seed, came away with a 42-36 victory.
The Panthers never found their rhythm offensively against the Mariners’ zone defense. However, through the first three quarters there were seven ties and 14 lead changes as CA used a gritty defense of its own to stay in contention. In fact, the Panthers forced DI-S into committing 25 turnovers, but the poor shooting proved costly.
“We just didn’t play well,” said Panthers coach Rodney Codrey. “We didn’t move the ball well, our top two scorers went 6 of 40 … it was pretty disappointing really.”
Juniors Vicki McIntyre and Rachael Grew, the team’s offensive leaders, were unable to get things going. McIntyre made just two of her 23 attempts from the field, while Grew was just four for 17 and all her attempts with from beyond the three-point line.
One of Grew’s successful shots was a three that fell through as the third-quarter buzzer sounded and tied the game at 27. Deer Isle-Stonington answered with consecutive hoops early in the fourth and CA was unable to catch up from that point on.
The Panthers did cut an eight-point deficit down to four on another Grew three-pointer with 1:21 to play, but Chelsea Brown’s press-beating layup and Britnie Jones’ foul shot with 22 seconds left sealed the win for the Mariners.
“[Central Aroostook] likes to run up and down the floor, they really play Downeast basketball,” said Mariner coach Darren Eaton. “Tempo was the key … we needed to slow it down some.
“One and done [holding CA to one shot] was something else we felt we had to do to stay in the game and our kids did a good job of keeping them off the glass,” he added.
Abby Grinder scored 10 points, while Jones and Janelle Ciomei had nine each for DI-S, which improved to 18-2 and earned a trip to the regional finals for the first time since 1987. In fact, the Mariners’ quarterfinal win over Schenck Saturday was their first tournament victory in more than two decades.
Grew’s 13 points were tops for the No. 2-ranked Panthers (15-5), while McIntyre, a 1,000-point scorer at CAHS, had eight and did not reach double figures for the first time this season.
