OAKLAND — Whenever Cam King goes through a cold stretch, she can count on someone close to pick her up.
The shots simply weren’t falling early for the Nokomis girls basketball team’s star senior in Thursday’s matinée game against Messalonskee. Yet that was not the case with her younger sister, Raegan, who was hitting nearly every shot she took in the first quarter of the Warriors’ 49-26 victory.
“I was definitely (struggling a bit), and I was getting irritated,” Cam King said. “It’s good to have a sister who can go in there and do what she can do.”
What Raegan King did in this game was keep Nokomis in front against a Messalonskee team that played well early — and when the tables turned later in the half, it was the elder King who brushed aside her slump and took control to power the Warriors to a big Class A North victory.
The two sisters each finished with double-doubles with Cam registering 16 points, 12 rebounds and Raegan adding 16 points and 10 boards. Cam King also registered three steals and three blocks for Nokomis, which claimed its fourth consecutive victory.
With Messalonskee holding its only lead of the game in the very early going, Raegan King got Nokomis (4-1) in front as she sank a layup and a jump shot to put the Warriors ahead 5-2. She then notched her 10th point of the first quarter with a pair of 3-pointers.
“I was really feeling it,” the freshman, who had made four 3-pointers just two nights earlier in a victory over Erskine Academy, said of her performance in the first quarter. “Getting those shots on the swing, that’s what I’m good at.”
Messalonskee (0-5), though, would get right back in it as it used a 6-0 run to cut the lead to a single possession early in the second quarter. The Eagles’ surge would be brief as Cam King scored 13 of the Warriors’ last 14 first-half points to give the visitors a 30-16 advantage at the break.
The sisters’ production tapered off a bit in the second half, but Nokomis maintained its double-digit lead with solid defense and some key baskets from Brianna Townsend, who finished with seven points and six rebounds. Emberli Michaud added five points for the Warriors in the win.
Nokomis, of course, did not have the services of Raegan King last year with the standout freshman still in the middle school ranks. Unfortunately for the Warriors, they also spent the entire season without Cam, whose absence with a torn ACL hurt a Nokomis squad that stumbled to a 1-18 season.
Messalonskee’s Ashley Mullen, front, is defended by Nokomis’ Camryn King during girls basketball action Thursday in Oakland. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel
“It was hard missing a whole year, so it feels great to be back,” said King, who made her return to sports in the spring as a member of the Nokomis softball team. “I feel like a lot of coaches forget about us. … We all get along really well, we mentor each other, and we push each other.”
The Warriors have been rejuvenated by a young coach, too. You might not find a younger head coach in Maine than 21-year-old Chelsea Crockett, a former star who knows her current players’ positions well after playing for the Warriors from 2014-18.
“I think they (relate to me a bit better in terms of being closer to their age),” said Crockett. “We did a lot of stuff like basketball camps with them when I was in high school, and it’s cute to see them come through now as high-schoolers and become young adults. … They’re a hard-working group of girls”
Ashley Mullen led Messalonskee in scoring with 13 points and added three rebounds in the loss. The Eagles also got five points and six rebounds from Candace Pelotte, four points and three rebounds from Keira Goldsmith and seven rebounds from Lexis Bayne.
As for Nokomis, the Warriors will now face their stiffest test since their opening games against Bangor when they travel to Fairfield to face preseason No. 2 Lawrence on Tuesday. It’s a matchup in which the Warriors will need more strong efforts from the Kings.
“We know (Hope Bouchard) is good for them, but we know we can do it if we go out and work hard,” Crockett said. “Like I said, we have such a hard-working group. I can’t say enough about what they’ve done.”
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