As you might imagine, I kind of collapsed at the end of Tourney Week, but let’s do a quick summary of Saturday’s Regional Finals.
In Portland, Maddie Fitzpatrick spent the first half in foul trouble, yet nearly had a triple-double in only 18 minutes as Cheverus beat Oxford Hills. It was an incredibly impressive performance. In the other game, Ellie Gay had 18 and Gorham held off a Scarborough rally to punch yet another ticket to the Gold Ball game.
In the boys game, Portland had Windham on the ropes, but instead of going for the kill, they opted for a stall and it backfired. Windham went on a 13-2 run to take the lead and then went into their own stall, which gave me time to do some quick math: 75 percent of the 36 games I saw last week had a stall. I swear to God I saw a team stall up five in the third quarter. It’s getting painful.
The new free throw rule has only made things worse. Getting rid of the 1-and-1 was a terrible idea.
In Augusta, Mount Abram held Sammy Calder to 5 points and went on a 10-0 run in the final two minutes to tie the game, but Monmouth got a bucket from Lucas Harmon to seal it.
In Bangor, the Mount View boys continued their Cinderella(?) run through C North.
It’s nice to see a series of upsets in tournament play that completely makes sense. I’m sure there’s a lot of people surprised to see a No. 7 seed in the State Game, but people in the know have been pegging this team as a spoiler since mid-January when it looked like they might be the 12.
