South Portland, ME – "When CMCC and SMCC play each other, you can throw out the records," is the old adage from Central Maine Athletic Director and Men's Basketball Head Coach Dave Gonyea. Never was that truer than when the Mustangs traveled down to South Portland to face the Seawolves on Thursday night.  
 
SMCC may have been coming into the game with a winless 0-10 record against a CMCC squad that had won three straight, but they gave the Mustangs everything they could handle in a tremendous back-and-forth game that was worthy of the rivalry. Will Duke was the hero for Central Maine on its final possession, scoring a layup with one second left on the clock to steal a 62-61 win at the Hutchinson Union Building gymnasium. 
 
"We didn't play as well as we did in the past two weeks," said coach Gonyea. "Kudos to SMCC for coming out and executing a good game plan. Losing Isaac (Irwin) to a lower body injury earlier in the week hurt us. I was very pleased with the efforts of Ben Francis and Will (Duke) who really carried the day for us. At the end of the day, teams have to know how to win. Our guys persevered and didn't give up. We can keep ourselves in games going into the last five minutes, I'm confident we have the players who can execute." 
 
CMCC took a 31-27 lead after a wild opening 20 minutes where the teams traded the lead four times and spent all but four minutes within four points of each other. Charlie Houghton put up 12 points to keep SMCC close while Francis and Khaden Moore each had eight to give the visitors the slight edge heading into the locker room. 
 
The Seawolves quickly tied things up after halftime setting up another frantic 11 minutes where the lead was exchanged five more times. SMCC went up 51-49 with 9:01 left on the clock and would lead for the next nine minutes. But it was that last second where their hard work came undone. 
 
Trailing by six with four minutes left to play, Moore started the comeback with a point from the free throw line. Duke and Francis had back-to-back layups on either side of a Julius Silva missed three-pointer to make it 61-60 heading into the final minute. Both Thomas Martinotti and Cole Pulkinen missed free throws to give the Mustangs one final chance with eight seconds to go.  
 
Wyatt Hathaway inbounded to Duke who raced the length of the floor before dropping in a left-handed layup with 0.9 showing on the clock. Sean Bosia tried a desperation heave at the buzzer, but it was off target, sparking a wild celebration on the court between the Mustangs players and their large contingent of travelling students. 
 
"We have to finish games," said SMCC head coach Matt Richards on the YSCC Sports Network broadcast after the game. "We haven't done that yet all year. We've got to figure it out." 
 
Francis finished with a team-high 15 points for Central Maine with Moore the only other Mustang joining him in double figures with 13 of his own. The 62 points scored by CMCC were 16 fewer than in any of the other games for them so far this season. Coach Gonyea's squad won the rebound battle 42 to 27 and shot better from the floor with a 44.8% field goal percentage compared to SMCC's 36.8%, but the team was hampered by 13 turnovers. Houghton finished with a game-high 24 points for the Seawolves while Silva scored 11. 
 
The sides meet again towards the end of the season at Kirk Hall Gymnasium in Auburn, ME on Wednesday, February 12th. The Mustangs men's basketball team now heads into the first semester break with a record of 9-6 and a four-game winning streak. They open the second semester at home against Bryant & Stratton-Albany on January 12th.