April Showers
It's enough with the rain
Let's agree to not talk about that Celtics game, shall we?
Spring sports are off to a good start and it'll help if the weather will cooperate. I will say I wore more layers for a game than I did to drive to most basketball games this winter.
Down south, York's softball team is in mid-season form, thanks to a 3-run homer from Nya Avery.
, Portsmouth Herald
Rallying down 8 in the sixth is a great start to the season, but I'm a little disappointed that we're just now coming up with the nickname "Nya Natural" for Nya Avery. Where has this been the last couple of years?
There's been a couple of rallies in the early going where a game could have easily turned into a mercy rule result, which leads to my point that the mercy rules have too quick of a trigger. There's certainly games where the mercy rule is warranted. There was a 27-0 game the other day. No one needs more of that. But 10 runs in the 5th isn't impossible. My theory on mercy rules is they have nothing to do with the players or sportsmanship or anything like that. It's because the bleachers are cold. If it's a 15-0 game and it's sunny and 70 degrees, everyone's happy to be there. But if it's 7-0 and it's 40 degrees with some wind? Maybe add some humidity and it's a miserable experience in bleachers. I think mercy rules have nothing to do with sportsmanship. I think they're 100% about the parents.
Elsewhere
(I'm almost entirely pulling these from the notes left by people on the scoreboard)
Hampden's Rogan Lord scampered home on a wild pitch in the bottom of the 7th to break a tie with Messo...Casey Phelps' complete game, 13K performance led Boothbay by Hall-Dale...Isaac Ritchie struck out 16 Dexter Tigers in Mattanawcook's 6-0 win...Stearns blew open a game with 6 in the 8th to put away Schenck...Freeport freshman Bryson Jack struck out 11 in a complete game debut...Brady Chappell's 1-hitter with 7K's led Fryeburg to a shutout over Wells...Wes Gallant scored 5 runs in OOB's blowout over Traip...Mile Taylor's game-winning single in the 8th gave Waterville a W over Gardiner...Dominic Dumais hit a dinger and drove in 5 as Edward Little mercy ruled Lewiston...Sidney Nicholls' 5-inning 14K no-hitter led Medomak over Morse...Belfast's Katience Parenteau went deep to walk off Foxcroft...Reese Bryant's grand slam highlighted Bonny Eagle's statement win over Windham...Addison DeRoche was perfect through 4 with 12Ks against Biddeford...Liam Sellinger scored 4 goals in Scarborough's win over Kennebunk...Audrey Ingersoll's 3 goals and 2 dimes led Greely over York.
One great feature of the new website features is...tourney odds are now available for baseball, softball, and lacrosse!
I'm sure you remember this from basketball season. This uses a Monte Carlo simulation to simulate the rest of the season 10,000 times and distributes every team based on where they fall in each of the simulations. It'll determine a team is either IN/OUT or a ??? This isn't a mathematical call. With Heal Points that's kind of impossible. If you're OUT, that simply means you didn't make the playoffs in any of the 10,000 simulations.
As I'm sure you remember, this is a paid feature.
If you click on a team, it'll break down their results by record. As you can see, it finds scenarios where Cheverus softball finishes 9-7, so it'll get pretty deep into the outlier scenarios.
This will update daily.
Maine Basketball Rankings is only made possible by our subscribers
To get more data, game predictions, and more
Subscribe now
Colby has a new basketball coach.
Colby College
Originally from Mass, David McLaughlin played at Colby in the 90's before a coaching career that, most recently, had him at Dartmouth for the past 10 seasons.
Let's go to girls lacrosse.
Windham is unbeaten so far in the early going and is third in the state in scoring offense at 16 goals a game, including a 20-0 shellacking of Oxford Hills and a nice road win over Cheverus to open the year. They're third in the state at scoring differential at +11.7/game.
They'll head to Saco to take on Thornton Academy, who's only blemish came at the hands of #1 Kennebunk (also #1 in Varsity Maine's poll, just ahead of...Windham).
Tourney Odds have them slotting in at 4/5, but it's way too early to get caught up in that.
This will be a nice early test for both of them.
The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.