Buzzer Beaters
What a finish!
If you've been here all season, you've probably noticed that there's been a newsletter at 7am-ish every day there's a game. So Saturday nights, since there's no Sunday game, I go to bed as soon as the scores are all in and try and catch up on my sleep. And after Tourney Week, I really collapsed and took 2 whole days off, so here we are.
If, for some reason, you missed the last 10 minutes of Regional Final Saturday, it was one of the best stretches of time in recent tourney history.
We were in Portland, wrapping up a rather mild Both A South Regional Final. Drew Bonifant and I recapped the Regional Finals from Portland.
All the while, we had the Live Stats up and it was apparent that the games in Augusta might just go down to the wire.
Let's go to Augusta, where Spruce Mountain and Maranacook are tied with 4.8 seconds in a game everyone expected to be very close. . Rob Kennedy and Jarod Richmond are on the call and we're all huddled around a laptop on media row in an otherwise empty hockey rink.
That's obviously a massive win for Maranacook and, if you're Ethan Chilton, imagine hitting a game-winner to send your team to a state championship as your only bucket of the game.
After a quiet first 2 games of the tourney, Grady Hreben erupted to go 7/11 from three for a game high 21 (and C South MVP honors). Jack Fontaine added 16. For Spruce, Caden Frazier had 16 in the losing effort. Cai Dougher added 10 & 7.
As Rob said, no one's going to forget that. And a lot of people noticed the unfortunate incident of a Spruce player getting knocked down and there's people going crazy on Facebook (shocking, I know) with frame-by-frame analysis of how people were terrible to him, but I think that's all overblown. It's terrible he got knocked down, but I can't imagine anyone was trying to hurt him.
Back at the Hockey Rink, we continued to pack up, but that didn't last, because about 4 minutes later in real time, Fort Kent had the ball down 1 against Caribou with 5.8 seconds left. Steve Carmichael and Bobby Russell on the call for WHOU.
So let's go to Bangor where everyone in the building knows who's getting the ball.
courtesy of WHOU
That's Aden Jeffers with one of the more difficult game-winners in the paint you'll ever see to dethrone last year's B Champs AND give Fort Kent their first-ever Regional Title.
Here's another angle.
Jeffers finished with an efficient 24 (especially efficient if the shots looks like that) and Tobias Naranja added 14. Owen Corrigan had 20 & 6 for Caribou.
What a finish to the Regionals.
Elsewhere
After 3 points in the first 2 games of the regional, Lucas LeGage exploded for 17 as Portland's defense locked down Cheverus...Megan House had 17 and Addison Cyr added 15 points, 13 rebounds, and 4 blocked shots as Mattanawcook kept their perfect season alive...They face Maddie Grimaldi and Spruce Mountain. Grimaldi had 21 & 9 to lead the Phoenix over Wells...Kylie Lamson's 19 led Cheverus over SoPo...Mickey Fitzsimmons scored 20 to help Machias hold off a rally from Quinn Pelletier and Madawaska. He had 28...Monmouth got 18 from Levi Laverdiere and 15 & 10 from Rory Foyt to knock off Mt. Abram...Brooklynn Raymond had 19 points and 4 steals as Penobscot Valley won their second straight Regional Title...Stella Peterson's double-double got Mt. Abram by Buckfield...Jonesport-Beals held Mason Pelletier to 11/6/4, but Raiden Cochran scored 16 to lead Easton to a Regional Title. The Royals led by 11 in the first quarter...Harry Louis dropped 27/8/8 on Forest Hills. Jaxson Desjardins had 22...Ava Lerman had 21 points and 6 steals in Wisdom's win over Katahdin...Liana Hartwell continued her dominant regional with a 20/16/11 triple-double. She's a sophomore!
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With the Regionals done, obviously Jay Baines and I had to see how well we did at picking Cinderellas (spoiler: pretty good!) and then we previewed the 10 Gold Ball games and made some predictions. Also: my kid Rhys crashed the party.
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The Gold Ball Edition of the Tourney Guide is out and has a LOT of new data, thanks to the Live Stats collaboration with the MPA.
Here's the Mattanawcook girls:
This includes all the teams still playing and is available for free for paid subscribers.
Lucas McNelly
In "Controversies that are completely overblown for $200, Alex", we have this story of the Brunswick students who tried to live stream playoff games.
Travis LazarczykColumnist
This is really simple, even if a bunch of people on Facebook don't understand it. These Brunswick students streamed games online for free all year. That's good! But then they tried to stream playoff basketball games, which is bad. According to Travis Lazarczyk's column, they tried to do this last year and got shut down. Then tried to do it this year (presumably with a press pass they didn't have last year? That doesn't really matter) and got shut down again.
But when you apply for a press pass, the policies are clear.
WHOU, Maine Public, and NFHS pay money for the exclusive rights to broadcast the live video from these games and the MPA is obligated to make sure those rights are protected. And you can think that some exemption should be set up for students to learn. There is. They can do an audio-only stream (like 92.9 the Ticket does...with permission to include the live stats)
Or they can do it live to tape, like the NBA Finals in the 70's. But they can't just do it because they want to. As Rob Kennedy said, part of learning about broadcasting is learning how media rights work and this is how they work.
Maybe the reaction to this pisses me off because I've just heard 15-20 people a week since December ask--nay, insist--I give them content for free and I'm tired of it. Also, don't do that. It isn't putting across the message you think it is.
You can think it won't hurt to let the Brunswick kids do their thing, but then it's the TA kids. And the Nokomis kids. And the Brewer kids. And the Gorham kids. And the 20 different groups of kids pretending to be ESPN at the games and suddenly the math doesn't work for WHOU to do the games anymore and we lose a fantastic service. Because those people working the WHOU games aren't putting in 12 hour days getting you the broadcast so you can watch from Florida for free. They're professionals with kids who want to eat and a mortgage to pay. Complaining that you should be able to consume their hard work for free is insulting.
Stop it.
Well, well, well. Look what we have here.
Lawrence and Oceanside split in their regular season series, including an overtime game way back on December 9th. That was Oceanside's last loss and no one got within 15 points of them in the B South Regional, so naturally they didn't win the tournament MVP, despite shooting 47.5% from three as a team.
They shot 63% in the Regional Final and if they do that again, I like their chances. If not, Maddie Provost and Ashley Shores could complete the revenge tour. And they were great in the B North Regional.
This might come down to depth and role players. Provost will probably win Miss Basketball, but Shores had the best regional statistically with an EFF of 29.0 (next highest: Renee Ripley at 20.7 and Provost at 20.0). Olivia Breen is a matchup problem down low. Those 4 could easily cancel each other out. If so, does someone like Abby Stackpole or Payton Cole step and make the difference?
Maine Public takes over the rest of the way.
The Model's picks for the rest of today's games are after the jump.