Lucas McNelly is a self-described basketball nerd who closely follows Maine hoops throughout the season. He lives in Damariscotta and is a contributor to the Bangor Daily News. His newsletter below is courtesy of Maine Basketball Rankings.
Oh, man. The Tournament, it does not disappoint.
Let’s start in Portland, where #6 Spruce Mountain was taking on #3 York in boys B South action. The Wildcats led for most of the first half, but neither team was shooting well, so the biggest lead they’d been able to get was 6.
In the second half, they traded the lead a couple of times, and you started to wonder if Spruce was going to end their rough streak of quarterfinals games.
With just under 5 to go, Jace Bessey knocked down a transition 3 to tie the game, but it got waived off. Offensive foul on the screen by Cai Dougher. It was a pretty bang-bang play. That gave Dougher 4 fouls. Up until this point, Dougher was their leading scorer with 11. He finished with 11. In the next Spruce possession, he got called for another offensive foul for using his off-hand to drive baseline.
If it was a foul, it was minimal. He fouls out. In the next 2 possessions, Spruce gets called for 2 more iffy calls. York capitalizes on each one and suddenly, over the course of a minute and change, a tie game is a 12-point lead. York advances.
In Portland for the Game of the Day, everyone assumed the Medomak Valley and Yarmouth boys in B South would have some fireworks. And they sort of did, just not what anyone expected.
Medomak started strong. They got early 3s from Mason Nguyen and Kristian Schumann to build an 8-2 lead despite Yarmouth’s Evan Hamm blocking everything in sight. He finished with 4 of Yarmouth’s 6 blocked shots.
It was 13-8 after 1. And then Yarmouth scored to make it 13-10 and you could feel the anticipation. But Medomak strung some baskets together to stretch it back out to 9, then answered some Yarmouth buckets to get it to 11.
Mason Nguyen beat the buzzer to make the lead 27-14 at the half.
Everyone spent the half expecting the Yarmouth run.
But it was Medomak who went on a run. They shot 9/13 from the floor in the third as part of a 24-2 run to put the game out of reach. They won 61-33. Kory Donlin led the way with 16 points, 11 rebounds, and 5 assists.
Back in Bangor, the #3 Maranacook girls were hoping to fare better than the boys as they also played MDI, only this time the 6 seed.
MDI opened up to a 20-0 to end the game before it even started, giving the Big East teams a pair of resounding wins to open up quarterfinal play.
I’m sure Facebook will be calm and reasonable about this.
But let’s see what that does to the Gold Ball Odds…
Back in Portland, we finish with the Oceanside boys and #8 Mountain Valley in B South.
Mountain Valley’s Tanner Henry kicked off the scoring with a three. Then his steal led to a Ben DeSalle bucket. Then he picks Cohen Galley’s pocket, which leads to another DeSalle bucket.
Timeout Oceanside.
Out of the timeout, Carter Galley turns it over and Henry hits another 3. 10-0 and the Mountain Valley crowd is losing their minds.
Zeb Foster scores to get them on the board (he had 12) and a little over a minute later, we’re all tied up. Oceanside outscores Mountain Valley 40-11 over the rest of the half.
It was Cohen Galley who had the hot hand, but as we learned later in the game, there was a reason for that.
He needed 38 to join his brother in the 1K club and he got exactly 38.
There were some murmurs in the crowd about why he was still in, but this makes sense to me. You’ve got an opportunity to get it out of the way. It’s one less distraction going into a semifinal that figures to be very competitive. And what happens if you take him out 8 short and he’s in foul trouble all night and only scores 4 in a loss? Get it out of the way.
Load up on caffeine. It’s gonna be a long day.