Seagulls knocked from perch

AUGUSTA — It was a battle for the birds, and this time, the Seahawks were king.

The Boothbay Region basketball team defeated Old Orchard Beach 57-47 in the Western Class C semifinal at the Augusta Civic Center on Thursday night.

The Seagulls end the season with a 14-5 record, and for the second straight season, have been knocked out of the playoffs in the semifinals.

Old Orchard led the Seahawks 36-35 heading into the fourth quarter after a closely contested three quarters of play, only to be outscored 22-11 in the fourth by Boothbay. Most of those points came from point guard Dan Dickinson, who scored a game-high 22 points.

“Things were going pretty well for us,” Old Orchard head coach John Regan said. “Then there was a sequence where I think we turned the ball over, they went in and it became 45-39 real quick, and we never recovered from that.”

It was the first loss for the Seagulls in over a month, as the last time Old Orchard was beaten was on Jan. 19, in a 50-45 loss to Wells.

The Seagulls struggled early in the contest, being outrebounded by the much smaller Seahawks. Boothbay started the game off with a 7-0 run in the first four minutes of play, before Old Orchard turned things around with a 10-0 run of its own, heading into the second quarter with a 10-10 score.

Scoring would go back and forth between both teams in the next two quarters. Dickinson scored 12 of his 22 points in the first half, and the Seahawks went into the locker room at halftime with a 24-22 lead. But the Seagulls pulled the lead out in the third quarter, thanks to the low post play of center Nate Dow, who finished with a team-high 17 points, and close-range jumpers from forward Rajheem Lang, who finished with 11 points.

But it was too much Dickinson in the fourth.

“The kid doesn’t seem to stop at all,” Regan said. “And we knew that, and you try to close out on him, but he’s so quick, all he needs is just a little opening to get a shot off.”

The fourth also saw too many trips to the foul line for Boothbay. The Seahawks, who were 5 of 5 from the line in the first half, went 14 of 21 from the line in the second half, most of those trips coming late in the fourth to seal the game. Lang fouled out of the game for Old Orchard with over two minutes to play, and starting forward Jason Dutton also fouled out with 46 seconds to play.

“I was happy where we were at halftime, and I was happy at the end of three,” Regan said. “[Boothbay] just had that one burst that put it away. From there, we were fouling them and they were making [foul shots].”

The game was the final contest for five Old Orchard seniors; Dow, Lang, Dutton, Ryan Gallant and Andrew Thayer.

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