PARIS — No one except perhaps the injured teammate he replaced would have wanted the assignment Riley Chickering drew four batters into Saturday’s Eastern A baseball semifinal.

Even Chickering, a junior southpaw grateful for small blessings, is glad he didn’t have time to ponder his predicament.

Chickering replaced injured starter Dalton Rice in the first inning, got out of a bases-loaded jam and combined with fellow Oxford Hills relievers Walter Feeney and Garrett Fillebrown to hold off a stubborn Cony team for an 11-6 victory at the Gouin Athletic Complex.

The top-seeded Vikings (16-2) will face defending state champion Messalonskee on Wednesday at 5 p.m. at Morton Field in Augusta. The teams did not play each other during the regular season.

Cony (12-6) had runners at first and second with one out in the first when Tayler Carrier’s line drive went off Rice’s pitching forearm. An errant throw allowed a run to score. Rice, meanwhile, was doubled-over in pain between the mound and home plate.

Rice tested his arm with a warm-up pitch, but couldn’t continue with what Vikings coach Shane Slicer termed a deep bruise just below the elbow. Slicer called Chickering, originally in the lineup as the DH, out of the dugout and sent him to the mound.

The Vikings intentionally walked Reid Shostak to load the bases. Chickering then got Thomas Foster to bounce into a 6-4-3 inning-ending double play, limiting the damage in what could have been a disastrous start and giving the Vikings a big lift.

“If you get ahead in the count, you can throw the pitch you want, and that really helps to get a ground ball,” Chickering said. “I was able to throw a 1-2 curve ball, get him to chase it and get a ground ball. We were real fired up. I think that’s a big momentum shift, being able to hold them to one.”

“Riley knew that he was going to have to pitch some meaningful innings in order for us to keep going, so he’s been preparing,” Slicer said. “Riley’s a tough kid. He was ready for it. He wasn’t scared.”

“I just kind of went in and pitched,” Chickering said. “Maybe between (the first and second), that’s when I really got nervous.”

The Vikings helped temper his nervousness by tying it in the bottom of the first on Dylan Cox’s sacrifice fly.

Oxford Hills catcher Jordan Croteau threw out a runner attempting to steal third to end the second, then the Vikings ripped off three runs in the bottom of the frame on a two-run single by Nick Attaliades-Ryan and a sacrifice fly by Feeney.

“We just wanted to get ahead early,” Attaliades-Ryan said. “I wanted to go up there and hit a line drive somewhere and get the guys in.”

The nerves may have caught up with Chickering in the third as he walked four, including one stretch of 12 consecutive balls. The Rams made it 4-3 on a wild pitch and Charlie Hallak’s RBI single.

Oxford Hills responded again in its half of the third, scoring four runs with the help of two Cony errors to take an 8-3 lead. Chickering had an RBI single and scored on a throwing error.

The Rams battled back for three runs off Feeney to make it 8-6 in the fourth, with RBI singles by Chandler and Reid Shostak and an error, one of four by the Vikings, accounting for the runs. Despite surrendering a single and a balk in the fifth, Feeney kept Cony at bay, thanks in part to a diving catch by center fielder Nick Bowie to rob Keith Cloutier of a hit.

“We’ve had three games against them that have been like this, kind of donnybrooks. We lost 9-8 and 7-6. It’s just a matter of who makes the least amount of mistakes in a game like this,” Cony coach Don Plourde said.

Fillebrown picked up the save with two innings of hitless relief, fanning four and walking one.

“We were ready for Garrett to come in. We just didn’t want him to throw three innings if we could help it because he was basically our last one,” Slicer said.

The Vikings gave their closer some breathing room with a two-out rally in the sixth that produced three runs, coming on a wild pitch, a bases loaded walk by Ryan Godin and an RBI single by Matt Beauchesne.

“Those were big. Bumping a two-run lead up to five not only takes pressure off me but the team as a whole,” Fillebrown said. “It made it easier to go out there and throw, have fun and close out the game.”

Beauchesne had three hits to lead the Vikings. Nick Bowie and Croteau collected two apiece. Chandler Shostak had two of Cony’s six hits.