AUGUSTA — The run is over.

Not without a night’s worth of mini-runs. And a sore back. And a bloody nose. And another flurry of 3-pointers from kids who didn’t get the memo that said they weren’t supposed to knock them down.

Edward Little’s two-year, two-snow-delay and-31-minute reign over Eastern Class A boys’ basketball ended Tuesday night the way anyone paying attention would have expected it to end, eventually.

With the courage and the chill that come when a program recognizes that it belongs at this level, every time the calendar flips to February or meanders to March.

“I never got to play in an Eastern Maine final and I would have loved to,” said EL coach Mike Adams, 1990’s Maine Mr. Basketball at Mt. Blue. “This senior class went to four in a row.”

Not the streak they wanted, mind you. Or the rematch made in Hollywood.

The Red Eddies were a minute away from their third straight regional title and third consecutive trip to a Class A final.

Waiting in the wings was Cheverus. The program that hasn’t lost in two years. The team that held off EL last year with the help of a tournament MVP, Indiana Faithfull, whose family had to file an injunction just to make him eligible for the playoffs.

EL wanted — and thought it deserved — the chance to drop its own hammer of justice a year later, on the court where most of us prefer to have these matters settled.

Then came the forced pass and the turnover. And the go-ahead and insurance baskets by Zach Blodgett. And a Red Eddies 3-pointer that fluttered through and caught nothing but the hot dog-scented air.

Bangor 41, Edward Little 38.

Tears. Embraces. What-ifs.

“These kids wanted to play Cheverus. They expected to be playing Cheverus. If anybody deserved to beat Cheverus, it was them,” Adams said. “I have no doubt in my mind. We played them this summer, and it was a war.”

Like the semifinal classic against Hampden that preceded it, so was this one.

No different from any unfriendly uprising, it had attrition.

Quin Leary stumbled off the court near the end of the first half clutching his lower back, looking as if he shared a Champions Tour golfer’s need for a chiropractor.

Little more than a minute into the third quarter, Timmy Mains — the 100-and-nothing-pound point guard, he of multiple concussions, same kid who christened a locker room trash can with his lunch at the end of last year’s final — sat awkwardly against the Red Eddies’ own baseline.

Seventy feet away, Luke Hettermann was busy draining a 3-pointer against the vacuum where Mains would have been standing. Only he was dabbing his nose helplessly, watching the flow of bright red drip onto his maroon jersey.

And yes, in a tournament world where ‘let ’em play!’ supplanted “DEEEE-FENSE!” as the most popular cry from the crowd at least a decade ago, nobody needs to point out to the Red Eddies that the three men in charge of the festivities, in fact, did.

“They say (Bangor’s) Roger Reed  is the best defensive coach in the state, and he must be if they only committed two fouls (actually three) in the whole second half,” Adams said. “There has to be a happy medium. We go inside a lot. Bo and Quin (Leary) got banged around all night long, and how many free throws did they shoot?”

Two for Bo Leary, just over three minutes into the game. Zero for his little brother.

“It was frustrating,” said Bo Leary, held to 11 points, or less than half his season average. “But a lot of the year it’s been like that, being double-teamed and all. You just have to play through it.”

Play, and prosper, they did.

After the Mains bloodletting, Bangor was up five to match its largest lead of the night. One minute passed. Then two. Mains was still missing.

Was the nose broken? Was EL finished?

No, and heavens, no.

Cody Nicholas rained down a 3-pointer. Brandon Giguere followed suit.

Then, in a play that captured his career in a three-second highlight clip, the reappearing Mains sliced through two would-be defenders who outweigh him by a railroad tie.

Basket. Foul. Lead.

EL went ahead by five on Quin Leary’s 3-pointer late in the period.

Bangor enjoyed an 11-2 march before Mains rained down EL’s fourth trifecta of the half to cut the Red Eddies’ latest deficit to one.

Next trip down, Mains thought about launching from the same spot. Instead, he dribbled past a Bangor defender, knocked down a 16-footer, reclaimed the lead and essentially scratched his name into the Al Halliday MVP Trophy.

Thanks to some ill-advised passes, Blodgett’s heroics and the inability to send Bangor to the line for 1-and-1 until it was too late, there would be no glory.

But guts? EL’s got ’em. In excess.

“When I came in as a freshman, you could see the leadership of those seniors,” Bo Leary said. “That’s what we knew we had to do. We were always in the weight room. We were always getting shots up. That’s what people follow.”

“All June and July, those kids were in the weight room every morning at 7 in the morning. And again at 11:30 in the morning. And again at 4 in the afternoon,” Adams said. “That’s not much of a life for a high school kid. Hopefully they look back and feel it was worth it.”

Regardless of what the scoreboard said at the end of two ill-fated Eastern Maine finals and two state games that got away, you can bet the response already is unanimous.

Leary, Mains, Nicholas, Giguere, Ben Armstrong, Luis Rovayo, Cam Bradbury and Garrett Weldon were part of something bigger than they are.

EL’s program is more than those eight kids. More than the preceding seven from the Classes of 2008, ’09 and ’10, who now are playing college ball.

It’s a powerhouse.

The run continues.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His email is [email protected].