Brewer Has a New Coach

Let's start with a correction.

In yesterday's newsletter, I wrote the Mary Saunders is the Assistant Principal at Brewer. She is, in fact, the Administrative Assistant to the Athletic Director and Assistant Principal. I read the website incorrectly. Apologies for the error.

As for the story itself, it is ongoing.

So Newcomb's Interim title lasted all of one day by design, as Brewer was obviously scrambling to transition to a new coach and had to have someone coach the game on Tuesday.

As for the Bapst situation, we now know for sure that it was unrelated to the Brewer situation. From the BDN:

“We were doing a shell drill in practice, pretty standard stuff. It went horrible. I called for a drink break, the players left the gym, and I kicked a basketball at a wall,” Bryant said Wednesday. “I kicked it pretty hard, but I mean, it’s a gymnasium. I think gymnasiums can handle basketballs.”

The next day, he was in the athletic director’s office and was told there had been multiple complaints about his intensity at practice.

That got him a 1-game suspension. Then some complaints turned it into a 2-game suspension and then it...ended badly.

Sometimes things don't work out.

‘They just wanted me out’: John Bapst boys basketball coach resigns after parent complaints

Chris Bryant resigns as John Bapst boys basketball coach after parents complained about his intensity. He reflects on his experience and future plans.

Bangor Daily NewsMatt Junker

We got a couple of games in last night after most of the state got snowed out, but none of them were particularly close.

In the absence of any games, I invited Jon Duke on the podcast to talk about the first week of games in A North, some stories from around the state, impressions from the SoPo preseason tournament, the value of a strong boosters club, and the surprising performance so far of the gap year Celtics (In Brad We Trust).

Ok, we actually scheduled this last week, but it sounds better that way.

So the way I'm going to release the podcast for the foreseeable future is to do it first on YouTube in the evening and then everywhere else the next morning. It's an algorithm trick I learned that seems to be working? The numbers have been 4x higher since I started doing it and you know I love numbers.

This will debut tonight at 8pm.

Click here to subscribe to YouTube.

In California, Jason Crowe, Jr. broke the state all-time scoring record in his 100th game.

Imagine breaking the state's all-time scoring record in December of your senior year. Better yet, imagine playing that many games.

If, like me, you're interested in what's happening in the news/journalism scene, you'll enjoy this.

US News and World Report interviewed Alex Seitz-Wald, the new Deputy Editor of the Midcoast Villager in Camden. Seitz-Wald is pessimistic about a lot of aspects of news, but surprising optimistic about the role of hyper-local news, especially in the face of AI.

But AI cannot do the most fundamental job of any reporter: Talking to humans. It can’t bring new information into the world, it can only help you access what is already out there. It can’t call a source to get a scoop or a fresh quote, it can’t notice a select board member whispering something to a colleague in the middle of a tense meeting, it can’t take a photograph of the high school football game, it can’t ride out to a house fire with firefighters, it can’t bump into someone in the dairy aisle of the supermarket and get a story idea. I could keep going.

MaxPreps and other sites do AI game reports of games and they're all terrible because they can't capture the parts of the game that happen outside the lines. They just regurgitate crap.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Central Aroostook/Madawaska game that got snowed out and rescheduled for today. Turns out it's still the boys Game of the Day.

But on the girls side, we have Cony heading to the coast to take on Oceanside. The Mariners are 1-1 with the loss coming to Lawrence in overtime. Cony is also 1-1 with a loss to Mt. Ararat, the defending A champs. Each team has an easy win and an understandable loss. This is a good early season litmus test game for each team.

The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.