The Tournament is here!!!
The best 9 days of the year start today at 4 p.m. as people from all over the state descend on Portland, Augusta, and Bangor. Upsets will happen. Legends will be born. New champions will be crowned. And at least one kid will hit a shot he’ll be talking about in bars 30 years from now.
It’s going to be epic.
But first, we had some AA Quarterfinals Thursday night.
Kevin Rugabirwa went off for 30 points as Portland blew out Edward Little in the AA North 3/6 game. They face the winner of Cheverus and Bangor, which will almost certainly be Cheverus (they’re favored by 27).
South Portland’s season started badly, to say the least. The defending champs started 0-5. But they recovered. They finished by winning 5 of their last 6 and you could start to make the case that maybe they could make another run. Their quarterfinal matchup with Thornton Academy seemed like a formality. They had swept the season series, although both games had been within single digits. But TA had lost 12 in a row before finishing with a win over Bonny Eagle and teams that lose 12 straight leading into the playoffs usually don’t last very long.
They got started early. Josh Vallee hit a couple threes to give them an early lead. He finished with 21. It was tied after 3, but TA pulled away in the 4th quarter to pull off the upset, 59-43. We’ll have a new champion in AA boys.
On the girls side: With Addison Sulikowski out, the Thornton Academy girls got a huge 28 points and 17 rebounds from Emma Lizotte and led Sanford by 10 in the second half, but the Spartans rallied. Playing with 4 fouls, Julissa McBarron scored 21, Paige Sevigny added 18, and Sanford used a huge third quarter to survive.
