Maine South exacted some revenge on Notre Dame last Friday night in the Maine South Regional championship.

After losing to the Dons in a regional final last year, the Hawks got some payback as they held off a furious Notre Dame rally for a thrilling 53-52 win behind 16 points from junior forward Matt Palucki and 11 points from senior guard P.J. Killean.

“They knocked us out last year at their place so it’s sweet revenge to knock them out this year at our place,” Killean said. “We returned five key players from last year and we know what it takes to win and we proved it tonight.”

For Palucki, winning a regional championship — no matter whom it was against —was all that really mattered.

“It means a lot because one of our goals at the start of the year was to win championships,” Palucki said. “It’s really nice to see our hard work lead to this.”

The game was a back-and-forth affair early on with Maine South leading 9-7 at the end of the first quarter and Notre Dame ahead 22-20 at halftime.

Trailing 28-24, the Hawks started to assert themselves thanks in large part to Palucki. The junior scored seven points during a 9-0 run that put Maine South ahead 33-28 late in the third.

Maine South led 33-30 heading into the third and expanded that lead to 46-36 with three minutes to play as they appeared headed to a comfortable win. But the Dons weren’t going to go away.

A three-point play by Quinton Chievous and field goals from Shawn Wallace and Joe Ferrici cut the deficit to 48-43. Rodney Pryor knocked down a pair of three’s in a span of 35 seconds to pull Notre Dame within 51-49 with 24.7 seconds to play.

The Dons fouled Killean with 19.1 seconds to play and the senior calmly swished home two tries. Notre Dame was called for travelling on its next possession, but got the ball back and knocked down a three-pointer with five seconds left to cut the lead to 53-52.

Maine South didn’t bother inbounding the ball as the Dons didn’t have a timeout to stop the clock. So Notre Dame grabbed the ball hoping for a technical foul for delay of game but the refs chose to just let the clock run out.

“This is our first regional since 04-05,” Killean said. “It’s really big but we have to keep getting better and get to the sectional championship.”

For Notre Dame, it was a heart-breaking loss.

One of the bright spots for Notre Dame was the surprise performance from pryor off the bench. The 6-3 junior guard knocked down four three-pointers and scored 14 points.

“After we beat Leyden (in the regional semis) my coach came to me and told me to worry about the next game,” Pryor said. “He told me to envision hitting big shots so when I got the opportunity, I had to take advantage of that.

Three other players reached double digits for the Dons but it just wasn’t enough. Wallace and Chievous finished with 11 points each while Ferrici finished with 10.

“They got an 11 point lead but we came after them,” Notre Dame coach Tom Les said. “We did some good things, but (Maine South) stood their ground. In a game this close, where it comes down to one point, if we made one more play it’s a different game.”

While Notre Dame has a nice group of players returning next year led by Chievous, Pryor, Ferrici and Ross Langlois, they’re going to miss some of their seniors.

None more so than Wallace, who stood only 6-2 but consistently mixed it up in the paint and could do a lot of different things for the Dons.

“I loved playing at Notre Dame,” Wallace said. We had a great coach, a great coaching staff, a great student section and I just hope next year the underclassmen have a better outcome than this.”

Notre Dame will also lose seniors Matthias Trizna, Tim Hirsch, Mark Rubel, Matt Moser and Phil Kerber.