NEGAUNEE — The Carney-Nadeau boys basketball team knew going into Monday night’s Class D regional semifinal game that it would have a tough task on its hands in guarding Ewen-Trout Creek’s Jake Witt.

But in some ways, the Wolves used that to their advantage.

C-N broke out to a big lead early and forced the Panthers to not only play catchup the rest of the way, but also rely almost entirely on Witt for offense the entire game.

With E-TC becoming one-dimensional, the Wolves eventually built an advantage that was too much to overcome and prevailed 51-45.

Preston Lauscher led C-N with 17 points while Jason Kirschner had 13 and Brett LaFord 10.

Witt led all scorers with 27 points.

“We just couldn’t get anything offensively with their pressure in the first half, which kind of set us on our heels,” ETC head coach Brad Besonen said. “I think we carried that to our defensive end and were still playing on our heels there.

“Our talk at halftime was let’s start being the anticipators that we were all year. I think we did a little better job of it in the second half, but when we really started to take off was at the six-minute mark (to go) of the fourth (quarter).”

C-N plays Dollar Bay in the regional final at 6 p.m. (Central time) Wednesday in Negaunee. The Blue Bolts downed Rapid River 63-60 in the other semifinal.

DB’s Devin Schmitz led all scorers with 26 points. Lucas Sundling had 21 for the Rockets.

Summary (field goals, free throws, total points)

DOLLAR BAY — B. LeClaire 2-2-8; Thompson 3-2-10; Schmitz 10-6-26; Janke 4-1-9; Iacano 4-2-10. Totals 23-13-63.

RAPID RIVER — L. Sundling 9-0-21; T. Sundling 3-1-7; Hardwick 4-1-9; Willemsen 4-1-9; DeMars 3-0-6; LaCasse 3-0-8. Totals 26-3-60.

Score by quarters:

Dollar Bay 22 7 19 15 — 63

Rapid River 12 14 14 20 — 60

FT shooting: DB 13 of 16 (81.3 percent); RR 3 of 10 (30 percent)

EWEN-TROUT CREEK — Cousineau 2-0-4; Nordine 4-0-10; Borseth 2-0-4; Witt 12-3-27. Totals 20-3-45.

CARNEY-NADEAU — Kleiman 3-2-8; Lauscher 7-1-17; LaFord 4-2-10; Koffman 1-0-3; Kirschner 5-0-13. Totals 20-5-51.

Score by quarters:

Ew-Trout Cr 6 15 6 18 — 45

Carney-Nad 18 15 10 8 — 51

FT shooting: E-TC 3 of 3 (100 percent); C-N 5 of 8 (62.5 percent)