Bangor’s Matthew Fleming takes a shot against Edward Little’s Wol Maiwen during the Class AA North final on Friday at Cross Insurance Arena. (Portland Press Herald photo by Ben McCanna)

PORTLAND — About five minutes into the second half, a Bangor assistant coach told first-year head coach Brad Libby that Matt Fleming had that look again, a look he’s had many times in his two years as a Ram.

“He’s a special player,” Libby said. “You could look in his eyes, his demeanor, he wasn’t going to let us lose.”

Bangor celebrates after winning the Class AA North final against Edward Little on Friday at Cross Insurance Arena. (Portland Press Herald photo by Ben McCanna)

Four minutes into the fourth quarter, Fleming made the quintessential hop-on-my-back-boys play in what was already his defining high school performance.

Defending state champion Edward Little had cut a 17-point deficit to two, and Fleming’s running mate, fellow senior Damien Vance, hadn’t yet gotten his seat on the bench warm after fouling out.

With a little less than four minutes left, Fleming got the ball on the right wing and immediately drove to the basket, drawing contact before finishing at the rim. After he made the free throw, the Rams led by five, and all of the momentum that had been building in the Red Eddies’ favor over the previous six minutes seemingly vanished.

“He’s been a great leader for us all year long, and the guys really follow what he does,” Libby said. “He stepped up all game long, but especially at the end, and kind of kept them together to persevere through that run that Edward Little had.”

Fleming has been a thorn in many of the Red Eddies’ side going back to middle school and through his first two years of high school at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School.

“He’s a great player,” Edward Little coach Mike Adams said. “Army doesn’t give a scholarship to anybody for nothing. He’s earned that. He’s put a lot of time in. He’s one of the best shooters, obviously, if not the best shooter in the state.”

After his sophomore year, Fleming’s family moved from South Paris to Bangor, in part to be closer to their elder son, Andrew, an Oxford Hills graduate who had enjoyed a fine freshman season playing basketball for the University of Maine.

Watching a stream of the game on his laptop from Stony Brook, New York, where Maine has a game Saturday night, Andrew, now a junior star for the Black Bears, saw his brother join him in the AA North record books as the George Vinall Award winner for the tournament’s outstanding player. Andrew won the award in 2016.

From a much closer vantage point, no one was happier to see Fleming lead the Rams to their first regional title since 2011 than Vance, a distinguished player in his own right having scored over 1,000 points in his career.

“He can play in and out,” Vance said. “If he has a mismatch, he goes inside and does his work and we just build on to him.”

Fleming didn’t have the luxury of a mismatch Friday night, since he was going head-to-head, at both ends, with Wol Maiwen, one of the most intimidating defenders in the state.

Matching up against Maiwen brought out Fleming’s best

“I love playing against Wol,” Fleming said. “He’s one of my good friends. We play (AAU) with each other in the offseason. I know that me and him are probably the best players in the state, so it’s just trying to send a message going up against him.”

Both Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalists tried delivering the message early and often, frequently trading baskets in the first half. Fleming scored seven of Bangor’s 12 points in the first quarter, then matched Maiwen’s total for the first half with 11 more points in the second quarter.

“I didn’t necessarily feel like I had to be the guy to score early, but we’ve been preaching lately that we need to come out with energy and tempo,” Fleming said. “Games that we’ve lost, we’ve come out flat and they’ve been able to run on us. At EL (in a 69-56 loss to end the regular season), we were flat.”

Fleming’s first-half outburst featured four 3-pointers, including back-to-back treys at the end of the half that gave the Rams a 34-17 lead.

The second half would be much more nerve-wracking, but no doubt worth it, for Fleming and the Rams.

“It feels great,” Fleming said. “This has been a two-year process. Everybody came back from last year and we knew that this was going to be a special year.”