AUGUSTA — Jordan Roddy was having the night’s biggest game. Then he hit the night’s biggest shot.
Roddy’s jumper with just inside two minutes to play broke a 53-all tie and gave the Cony High School boys basketball team the lead for good, sending the fourth-seeded Rams on their way to a 61-57 victory over No. 5 Camden Hills in the A North quarterfinals at the Augusta Civic Center.
Roddy led all scorers with 23 points for Cony (14-5), while Simon McCormick scored 16 points and Ian Bowers added 12.
Noah Heidorn scored 16 points for the Windjammers (11-8), while Jesse Fraser had 11 and Michael McGeady had 10.
STAR OF THE GAME: The lead had slipped away, and the Rams were reeling. Cony led 53-46 before Camden Hills stormed back, getting layups first on the fast break and then through traffic from Fraser, then tying the game at 53 when John Curtin (nine points) buried his third 3-pointer with 2:09 to play.
Out of the timeout, coach T.J. Maines looked to his star to make a play. Roddy got the ball off the inbound pass and calmly swished a jumper from just inside the free-throw line, putting the Rams back ahead with 1:51 to play.
“We had the out-of-bounds underneath, and Jordan made a really good cut toward the basket,” Maines said.
Roddy could sense that the team needed a boost with the game on the line.
“Coach talked to us, and was like ‘It’s getting there, it’s getting there. Time to go,’ ” he said. “This could have been my last game. You get emotional to think about it, but you pull through.”
Roddy had already played a crucial role in putting the team in position for the win. He scored 11 points and all but one of Cony’s points in the third quarter, helping the Rams pull ahead of the Windjammers with his defense (six steals) and ability to attack Camden Hills with jumpers and cuts through the paint.
“I think Jordan’s one of the best players in the state. I don’t think he gets enough respect,” Maines said. “I think around the state they think of him as a football player. He’s a hell of a basketball player.”
GUT CHECK: Roddy’s go-ahead jumper provided his final points of the game. His teammates picked up the slack to finish the job.
After a Camden Hills free throw to cut the deficit to one, Brian Stratton saved the Rams with a clutch putback, grabbing the rebound of a missed 3-pointer and quickly putting it back up to make it 57-54 with 1:16 to go. Dakota Dearborn had a steal on the next Windjammers possession, and Ian Bowers – struggling from the line down the stretch in the regular season – sank a pair of free throws to put Cony ahead 59-54 with 50.6 seconds left.
“Bowers was 1 for his last 13 from the line, and he made both there at the end, which was huge,” Maines said. “We were like ‘You’ve got to show us you can make them at the end of a game,’ and he had them. I’m really happy for that.”
Bowers tied for the team lead in rebounds (six) with Ashton Cunningham, while Stratton added five.
MCCORMICK STEPS UP: Roddy had the second half. Simon McCormick led the charge in the first.
The sophomore point guard knocked down a trio of treys, leading to a team-high 12 points at the break that helped Cony to a 33-27 advantage at the intermission.
“I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable,” said McCormick, who’s played a bigger role in the offense in the second half of the season. “(It took) mental preparation. Going over, thinking about and watching yourself make plays in your head.”
McCormick’s third 3-pointer was an instant highlight, as he took the inbound pass with 6.5 seconds left in the first half, pulled up between the halfcourt line and 3-point arc and knocked down the buzzer-beater, sending an animated Rams team into the locker room with a 33-27 advantage.
They were three impressive points – and, as the game turned out, three big ones.
“It’s huge,” Roddy said. “We go into the locker room all screaming and hollering. It’s a huge boost.”
Drew Bonifant – 621-5638
dbonifant@centralmaine.com
Twitter: @dbonifantMTM
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