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What a day.
I usually don’t start falling apart until the end of the tournament, but this year, my voice decided to bail on day two.
As you can see, it started to go when I got to the Portland Expo, was trash by the end of the first game and was completely gone by noon. So if you were thinking there might be a new podcast to listen to, the answer is nope.
On to the games. Let’s go through the day.
At the Expo, the Oceanside girls handled York rather easily, holding the Wildcats to 1/21 from 3 (4.8 percent) while they shot 41.7 percent, and I don’t need to tell you it’s hard to beat those odds. The better news for the defending champs was the return of Renee Ripley after missing a couple of games with a finger injury. If the Mariners are going to make a deep tournament run, she’ll be an essential piece to the puzzle.
Up in Bangor, the Wisdom girls trailed Ashland by 7 at the half, but locked down the Hornets on defense in the second half. Addison LaBelle led the Hornets with 19 points and nine rebounds. But it wasn’t enough to finish off Wisdom. They got an interesting game from Ava Lerman who struggled from the floor, to put it nicely. She shot 2 of 18 from the field, but made her impact at the line, hitting 18 of her 20 free throw attempts.
Those 18 made free throws are a new tourney record, breaking the previous mark of 17 by Tate Dolly of Machias all the way back in 2018. The other classes are:
Class C: Colleen Huff (Greenville) — 17 (1981)
Class B: Emily Wheaton (Presque Isle) — 15 (2016)
Class A: Cindy Blodgett (Lawrence) — 16 (1994)
You know you’ve had a good day when you do something in the tourney that even Cindy Blodgett never did.
The Wiscasset boys couldn’t have been thrilled as the Heal Points shook out in the final days of the regular season, as they fell to the sixth seed and a quarterfinal matchup with a Telstar team that beat them 71-33 on Jan. 29. Teams and fans can talk themselves into anything, but you’d rather not play the team that just beat you by 38.
The Wolverines held tough early, but when Telstar went on a 10-2 run at the end of the first half, they could have folded. People would have understood. But Landin Shirey hit a 3-pointer to stop the run and they went into the half down seven. Telstar stretched the lead to 11 on a Jonathan Marshall bucket. Wiscasset rallied and Telstar pushed the lead back to double-digits. Early in the fourth, Wiscasset used an 8-0 run to tie the game.
Wiscasset took the lead late on a Jevar Garricks free throw, but Brody Morgan sent the game to overtime with a bucket in the final seconds. Telstar pulled away in the extra period, 74-67. Brody Morgan finished with 29 and Reiley Hedden had 26, including going 6/12 from three. Landin Shirey led Wiscasset with 20.
In the 10:30 a.m. games, Medomak Valley took care of Leavitt. Chloe Fox had 13 and 11 for the Panthers. St. Dom’s had four players in double figures to eliminate Jaxson Desjardins (24 points) and Forest Hills. And Central Aroostook handled the Jonesport-Beals girls. Harleigh Allen and Lilly Burtt each had 20.
They got the sweep in the boys game behind 19 points and 11 rebounds from Jahleel Joseph. The Valley girls crushed Waynflete, which brought us to Biddeford.
There’s a couple of teams who don’t play anyone in their region. The Biddeford girls are one of them. They don’t even play anyone in Class B. This is a quirk of relegation that probably needs to be ironed out. They were relegated for a good reason, but if you’d talk to people in southern Maine, they’d tell you they had talent coming, and boy were they right.
They’re young and they’re talented. Eighty-four percent of their minutes Saturday came from sophomores and freshmen. Eighty-four percent! The rest of B South will be glad to see them go back to A next year.
Anyway, Wells had a tough draw ahead of them Saturday and actually took a 1-point into the locker room at the half. And in the second half, Mia Mariello took over. She hit three straight threes as part of a 14-4 run in the second half. She finished with 18. Megyn Mertens led Wells with 18 and 8. They’ll advance to the semifinals, where they’ll play Spruce Mountain, but just barely.
The Phoenix have been to two straight B South Regional Finals, but they almost didn’t make it out of the quarterfinals, as No. 9 Lincoln Academy gave them everything they could handle. The Eagles came out in a full-court press and they were everywhere, forcing turnovers and building a 10-point lead. And then Maddie Grimaldi got hot from deep, knocking down threes to get Spruce back in the game. The Phoenix would get close, even tie the game a few times, but Lincoln would always answer, usually in the form of a steal and bucket in transition or a big shot from Mariam DeLisle (she finished with 28).
Meanwhile, Spruce’s Avery Bessey had yet to make a basket. And the record-holder for most threes made in a B South tournament came alive. She hit a three with four minutes left to give Spruce their first lead since the first quarter, then another one to give them the lead again with a minute left. And that looked like it was going to be the game winner, until …
Chloe Anderson had the steal and equalizer. Lincoln Academy ran out of magic in the overtime period and Spruce Mountain advanced to a date with Biddeford.
That sets up a really interesting B South girls semifinal.
In the afternoon games, Connor Edwards hit 1,000 points. He had 26 in the game as Katahdin won.
Meanwhile, in Augusta, Mount Blue’s Carter Norton had a shot to take Brewer to overtime.
Freshman Oli Higgins led Brewer with 22.
In other afternoon games, Jagger Helwig led Fryeburg to a convincing upset of Greely. Madelynn Deprey had 21 as Caribou and Presque Isle drove all the way to Bangor to play each other. Is there anything worse than getting your rival in a quarterfinal? Hampden got 11 each from Aiden Kochendoerfer and Liam Henaghen to get by Gardiner. Falmouth got 19 from Billy Birks to knock out the defending champs from Gray-New Gloucester. James Witham led MDI 15 as they held Winslow’s Braden Rodrigue to 6 points.
In the Game of the Day, the Camden boys used an 18-2 run to erase a 13-point Cony lead in the third quarter. The teams went back and forth in a thriller before Camden pulled away late for 62-55 win.
Camden’s Nolan Ames was absolutely awesome in this one. He had 20 points, 16 rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots in an electric performance.
Down in Portland, Kennebunk’s Theo Pow put on a show. He scored the first 11 points of the game, including a couple of really great dunks, and 17 in the first quarter.
From there, it was all Kennebunk. Pow went off for 42 points and five steals as Brunswick had no answer for him. Kennebunk will get the winner of the Noble/Marshwood game that was rescheduled to avoid the storm.
The turnaround of the Belfast boys has been one of the great stories of the season. It’s been a great year for the Lions. But that ended last night in a loss to Caribou. The Vikings led 21-6 after the first quarter and cruised to a victory. Tristen Robbins had 21 points and eight rebounds and they held Trevin Ripley to 6 points.
In the Augusta finale, the Messalonskee boys beat Nokomis 55-39 behind 13 points from Ty Bernier.
But to be fair, Nokomis was a little short-handed. Their best player was busy putting up a 19/5/6 line against Stanford. Just imagine that court is the Augusta Civic Center.
We had a couple of kinks in rolling out LIVE Stats to all three venues at once, but we seem to have it working now. It’s pretty handy to be able to scoreboard watch the other two sites (or all three, if you’re at home).
There have been more than a few people leaning over my shoulder at the Expo to see what the score is in Augusta or Bangor.
Today’s slate looks interesting.
Game of the Day
All the way back on Dec. 18, Machias blew out Calais at home 55-29. They’ve only lost twice since then, both times to the No. 1 seed in D North, Schenck.
Outside of those losses they’ve only had two close games, a 37-32 win over Bangor Christian and a 43-42 win over Calais on Jan. 21.
Has Calais figured it out? Can they break through on the big floor and pull off the upset? It might be tricky against the top rated scoring defense in the state.
