AUBURN — If there was a date circled on its basketball calendar, Monday was likely it.

Central Maine Community College has been eying the YSCC Championship game all season, and has been driven by the chance to win another title.

Despite a poor first half, a double-digit deficit and trailing at halftime, the Mustangs weren’t going to be denied. CMCC simply shrugged off that half of basketball and decided to make the second half its own.

 The Mustangs came out strong, quickly erased the deficit and took the lead. CMCC then fought off the NHTI Lynx for an 80-74 win.

“It’s so exciting,” forward Susie French said. “I don’t even have words for it. We worked so hard all season. It’s been five months, and we’ve waited for this day. We knew it wouldn’t be easy, but we knew if we worked hard, we could get it.”

It is the second consecutive conference crown for the Mustangs. They’ll play in the USCAA National Championships in Uniontown, Penn., next week.

CMCC trailed by as many as 13 in the first half Monday. The Mustangs started off sluggish and a hot-shooting Lynx team built their momentum. They took a 43-36 lead into the second half.

“We knew we had to keep our composure,” said French, who  finished with 18 points and was named the tourney’s best defensive player. “We’ve played from six or seven points down before. Coach tells us that we can’t do it with one possession. We have to take it one possession at a time and get a stop.”

CMCC picked up its defensive play and got more consistency on offense. The Mustangs opened the second half with 13 straight points, eight coming from French.

“I’ve told them all year long that if we play the best defense we possibly can, then by far, we are the best team in the conference,” CMCC coach Andrew Morong said. “We didn’t do that in the first half. In the second half, not only did our pressure defense work, but our half-court man-to-man, that’s what we are, and that really worked. That took them out of their game.”

Maggie Sabine finished with 20 points for CMCC and was named the tourney’s MVP. Nohemy Aguila added 15 while Danielle McCusker had 12. Jordan Phinney led NHTI with 20. Allura Leblanc finished with 18 and was named the tournament’s top offensive player. Sara Romano and Danielle Kimball chipped in 16 and 14 points respectively.

NHTI missed its first eight shots of the second half and didn’t get a field goal through the first 6:40. The hot-shooting Lynx, who hit nine 3s in the first half, couldn’t find the touch after halftime.

“We figured they weren’t going to shoot 9-for-18 from the 3-point line again,” Morong said. “We knew we had to press. We went to our man-to-man pressure. We didn’t want to go for the steals. We wanted to gas them. I think we did that. They started missing their shots short, and we started crashing the boards.”

French opened up the second half with a basket.  McCusker followed with  one of her four 3s.  After hitting a pair of free throws twice, French then hit a corner jumper and the deficit had turned into a 47-43 lead. After an NHTI basket, French had a rebound. Chanel Chillers had a baseline shot, and Ariel McConkey hit a free throw for a 54-45 lead.

“We’re really good at feeding off each other’s energy,” said French, who had 10 points during that 18-2 run. “Everyone picks each other up. Once one person gets going, it gets the rest of us going.”

In the early minutes of the second half, the Lynx had four fouls, six turnovers, had burned two timeouts and had four players nursing three fouls.

“The offensive foul calls took them out of their game,” Morong said. “We took two or three charges in the second half. It almost scared them out of the paint.”

NHTI was battling foul trouble the rest of the game and had four starters with four fouls at game’s end. That opened up the inside for Sabine and made it hard for the Lynx to be aggressive on defense.

The Lynx got within three on a Leblanc steal and were within four on a Hayley Lawrence jumper, but NHTI could never get a late run going. CMCC always responded. Aguila came off the bench and had nine points down the stretch, including a 3. Corrie Kinder also came off the bench and had six points in the final minutes.

“Everyone who came into the game contributed immensely on both ends of the floor,” Morong said.

The lead was up to nine in the final minute but Leblanc produced six points down the stretch to keep the Lynx within reach.

CMCC shot 12-for-44 in the first half and had nine turnovers. While the offense struggled to bury shots, the defense watched the Lynx start hitting from the outside. NHTI used an 11-0 run on a trio of 3’s by Phinney, Kimball and Romano. Then after four points from Leblanc in the post, Kimball hit a 3 to make it 40-27 with 2:10 left in the half.

CMCC finished the half with 9-3 surge. McCusker hit a pair of 3s and French hit one to get the Mustangs within 43-36.