Westbrook’s Lyla Dunphe had the shot of the night.
This was called good on the floor, but if you slow it down, you can see that she was, in fact, late on the shot. Not by much, but late.
And that’s a good segue to explain that with the semifinals kicking off today at the Expo, that means that replay is now an option for end of game buzzer-beaters. It’s not available for the quarterfinals, because NFHS can’t handle it. Seriously, that’s the reason. But WHOU can! So we might be using replay Tuesday.
Here’s today’s analysis:
It’s midcoast Maine day at the Expo Tuesday, as five midcoast teams are in the B South semifinals for the second year in a row. In fact, when you add Spruce Mountain, six of the eight teams are closer to Augusta than Portland.
Lincoln Academy is trying to get to their first regional final since their Gold Ball campaign in 1989. They’ve won seven straight and in dominant fashion. Led by 1,000 point scorer Gabe Lash, they’ve got the eighth best offense in the state.
They take on a York team that stumbled a little down the stretch before righting the ship against Spruce Mountain in the quarterfinals. They were the fifth most dominant team in the state and had the second best defense in Class B
This might be a situation where the team that controls the pace controls the game.
Either way, it’s going to be a great night of basketball at the Expo.
We might even get to use replay!
Elsewhere…
What did I tell you about Mount View [boys]?
As far as 2/7 upsets go, this wasn’t all that hard to call [Mount View beat Fort Kent 78-44 in C North]. I was pretty bullish on them. They’d beaten the No. 1 seed in C South and pushed the No. 2 and No. 4 seeds in B South to the limit. Their issue was they just missed the opportunities for Heal Points on their schedule, so their seed was deflated. As everyone in Bangor saw, this is a very good team.
We had a similar situation in Augusta when No. 7 Hall-Dale blew out No. 2 Richmond. Richmond went 13-0 against Class D and 3-2 against Class C. Hall-Dale went 3-3 against Class B.
I don’t believe for a minute that a higher class automatically means a better team, because it just isn’t true. But as a whole, as you go up a class, the competition gets a little stronger. It just does. Is the No. 4 seed in A North automatically better than the No. 4 seed in B North? Not at all. But the 1-8 seed in A is usually better than the 1-8 seed in B.
There’s a lot of talk today about Heal Points, and I’d like to point out that Heal Points aren’t the problem. The problem is the schedules.
The teams don’t play each other. And they don’t play each other for a lot of reasons. Some conferences won’t play teams outside their conference. Some just boils down to how big Maine is. Mount View to Fort Kent is a four hour drive. Maranacook to Caribou is four hours and 15 minutes.
I think we need to do a couple things here. First, we should take the class weight in Heal Points back to five points. It was lowered to two to encourage more crossover games and that’s definitely what we got. But, the pendulum may have swung too far. Second, conferences have to open their schedules. I’ve yet to hear a good reason to keep them closed. Go back to Maranacook. How can Maranacook play teams in B North if the conference with most of the teams has a closed schedule? Third, there should be a minimum number of games played in the region the team is located [North, South]. It doesn’t have to be crazy. It could be as low as six. Ten or 12 feels right. You’re never going to get an everyone plays everyone schedule and until the day we do, we need the Heal Points.
