B North Is Gonna Be Crazy
This might the tourney to watch.
Apologies for the delay, but we lost internet last night.
So there were two candidates yesterday for Game of the Day, a quasi-tie that I cheated a tiny bit on and then said it'd be great if they could shuffle the schedule a little bit so I could see both. Turns out they did (kind of) and I didn't take advantage of it.
I went to Hermon @ Gardiner, where the pregame hype show has vastly improved over the years.
This is an area where teams can go nuts. Have fun with it! Gardiner clearly is!
The JV game finished 18 minutes early, which is insane. 18 minutes! Apparently they played the freshman game in an hour and 5 minutes, so I'm guessing they didn't call anything or take any timeouts or anything. Despite the delay, the atmosphere in Gardiner was great.
As for the varsity game, I saw Gardiner beat Cony 97-90 at the ACC in a game where defense wasn't a priority, so I wasn't pleasantly surprised to see Gardiner's focus on defense against Hermon. Maybe they scouted Hermon's win over Cony that held the Rams under 50 points or maybe they just didn't like giving up 90. Either way, the Gardiner defense was ACTIVE. They were in every passing lane and got to nearly every 50/50 ball en route to a convincing win that vaulted them to the 1 seed in B North.
But the real MVP was in the stands.
I'm assuming that's someone's little sister. She was hyped the entire second half. Awesome stuff.
Gardiner is now 77.3% to get the 1 seed.
Anyway, as good as Gardiner's shooting was in the 97-90 win over Cony, the defense was even better against Hermon. I think they might be legit?
I was texting updates back and forth with Mike Mandell, who was at the Medomak/Cony game, and they were in the third quarter when I left Gardiner, so I thought I could maybe get there for the ending. It's about 17 minutes from Gardiner to Cony, but at the time Cony was up 17, so it didn't seem worth it.
I was wrong.
Mason Nguyen scored 23 points in the fourth quarter to fuel the Medomak comeback that ultimately fell short in a 95-89 thriller. (40 minutes after I left Gardiner)
Cony had 6 players score 12 points or more. Jackson Kay led the way with 18 & 7. Medomak only had 4 players score. Nguyen led all scorers with 36 and Kollin Donlin added 26 & 9.
Cony travels to Medomak on Thursday for a rematch. Let's just pencil that in as Game of the Day. Really, though, any time you can see Cony, you probably should.
Mike MandellStaff Writer
Lisbon won their first home game in two years, despite one key challenge.
That's Owen Hurd, for those unfamiliar. He still had 12, a little shy of the MJ stat line, but MJ is an impossible standard to live up to.
Elsewhere
Owen Beaureguard's 20 led Cape over Sacopee Valley...Dirigo hit 12 3's, including 5 from Brady Philbrick in a win over Carrabec...Tayshaun Cleveland's 21 led Hall-Dale over Winslow...Mackenzie Parquette had 16 in Portland's win over Noble...Kirsten Bigelow's 17 paced Valley's lopsided win over North Haven...With Maddie Provost out with an injury, Amiah Laweryson stepped up to score 19 and Lawrence beat Morse...Alice Ferran's double-double (11 & 11) led Maranacook over Leavitt...Jacob Gibbs had 19 and Colin Schlobohm flirted with a triple-double (9 points, 12 boards, 8 assists) as Leavitt beat Maranacook...Anthony Almeida and Leighton Bradford each had 14 and Lawrence overcame 24 from Morse's Dylan Root...Cai Dougher's 14 points led Spruce over Wells...Braden New had 20 as Oak Hill rolled over Traip...Connor Kingsbury scored 23 points and Oceanside made 14 free throws in the 4th quarter to outlast Lincoln Academy...Dylan Theriault had 18 as Mountain Valley held off Telstar...Waynflete's JJ Carlo dropped 21 on Winthrop...Ian Lawrence had 20 points as Yarmouth put away Fryeburg early...Buckfield's Haleigh Campbell scored 12 points, which matched Wiscasset. Her teammates also scored...Madison Blanchard drilled 5 shots from deep in Mountain Valley's win over Telstar.
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Yesterday, I wrote a bit about the 2 technicals called on Brunswick's Logan Gray in the first half against Freeport.
Well, I've cleared the videos with Brunswick, so...you make the call!
The Mt. Ararat girls are no one's idea of a surprise team. The defending Class A champs who are, for some reason, in the North (blame all the old AA teams and geography) are 8-1 with the one loss coming in overtime to GNG.
What is kind of a surprise is a 6-4 York team that somehow is ranked 16th. Let's look at it.
They have no bad losses. The two EL losses make sense, as does the loss at GNG. Losing at Greely by 2 isn't shocking. There's a nice Wells win, but the big one is that win over GNG that was a real surprise when it came across the wire. They've also got the 7th hardest schedule in the state so far and the second hardest in B South (Medomak Valley) and the Model loves a hard schedule where you're competitive in every game.
Mt. Ararat will be a great test for a York team that's got aspirations in B South and might be a sleeper team if you want to impress people.
The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.