Closing the Book on B South (for now)

Did you think that maybe after 7 weeks you finally had a handle on B South football? That you had somehow sorted through all the chaos and knew what to expect from football's most unpredictable region?

You were wrong.

We could start anywhere, but let's refresh our memory of where the region stood at the start of the day. This doesn't even begin to convey the madness of the region

Let's go to Westbrook where the defending champs have had a rough year. They're mostly in and facing a Gorham team that's trying to rally down the stretch and sneak into the playoffs. Westbrook needed a win and when Cole Tanner went 76 yards on the first play of the game en route to 200 yards and 3 TDs in the first half, it seemed like they'd coast. But Gorham made a game of it. They recovered an onside kick and scored to cut the Westbrook lead to 4, but ran out of time and Gorham's finally ran out of lives.

Westbrook fights off Gorham's late rally to capture "River Bowl," clinch playoff berth

WESTBROOK—The "River Bowl" hasn't lacked for drama in its young existence. And there were no shortage of heart palpitations Friday evening at Olmsted Field. Where reigning Class B state champion Westbrook hosted Gorham in the teams' mutual regular season finale. Which ultimately doubled as a win-or-go

Hoffer's High School SportsMichael Hoffer

A couple weeks ago, Cheverus was floundering. Riddled with injuries, they got blown out by Marshwood, their 4th loss in a row, including a loss to Gorham. They righted the ship with a win over Deering, but you'd be forgiven if you assumed that would be a temporary blip, especially with a season finale against a Biddeford team coming off a blowout win over Marshwood. Because if you read the Facebook comments, the transitive property is everything, even if they don't know what that is. Clearly Cheverus would have no chance against the team that blew out the team that blew them out. And yet...the Stags raced out to a 27-0 lead in the first half. Colton Jewett ran for 2 touchdowns. And Cheverus blew out Biddeford. Take that, transitive property!

A little further north, Falmouth hosted Greely in a rivalry game. With the exception of an early loss to Leavitt, Greely has been pretty unstoppable this year, even overcoming a 4 turnover night to handle a previously unbeaten Hermon. Falmouth, on the other hand, has been streaky all year. One week they look like they could go on a run. Other weeks they look like an easy out. This week was the former. Falmouth led on multiple occasions and had a chance to tie the game late, but a bad snap allowed Greely to block an extra point and the Rangers held on to win by one.

Marshwood had been the talk of B South – make sure you check out head coach Andrew Elwell on the podcast – but stumbled last week in a blowout loss to Biddeford (you know, the Biddeford that just got blown out by Cheverus). How would they respond against a Kennebunk team that had quietly stacking wins since their own blowout loss in September to Massabesic? And how would do with Greg Castoras on the bench with an injury? Turns out pretty well. The Hawks rallied down 10 as Noah Goodwin led a balanced attack and Marshwood locked up the top seed in B South.

And that's a wrap on B South. I'm sure the bracket will be super chill.

I went to Medomak/Oceanside which, by all accounts, looked like it would be a close game. It was not. Oceanside's offensive line dominated the game, Wyatt Banow (220 yards) and Caleb Downer (138 yards) ran all over the Panthers, and the Mariners locked up a playoff spot with a 36-14 win.

Up in Hermon at the Game of the Day, Hermon pitched a shutout of Leavitt in the first half and took a 10-0 lead into the locker room. But you can only stop the Hornets for so long and Leavitt threw their own shutout in the second half. Landon Marquis found Cooper Morin for a 36-yard strike in the 4th quarter and Leavitt stayed unbeaten with a 14-10 win.

The first round of the C playoffs might be a little chalk, but I suspect the rest will be electric.

In other rivalry news, Cony won their 8th straight over Gardiner in the state's oldest rivalry. The 148th meeting! I hope there's some big plans for the 150th in 2028.

Elsewhere

OOB's seniors completed a perfect regular season career as the Gulls won a thriller over Mt. Ararat...5 different Falcons scored in Freeport's shutout of Lisbon...Fryeburg made a statement with a 48-32 win over Skowhegan. They'll be the 4 seed and host Messo in the first round. The Eagles got blown out by Lawrence, who will be the 1...Colton Gallant scored twice as Mountain Valley beat Poland...Bapst held the high-flying Winthrop offense to 14 points, but couldn't muster enough to beat them...Alex Martin and Portland bounced back after last week's loss. Martin scored three times in a win over Deering...Carter Davis had a 95 yard kick return as Oxford Hills handled Noble.

We had a couple of prelim upsets in soccer, including the #10 GSA girls knocking off #7 Penobscot Christian, but the score is apparently a secret.

You can check out the updated Gold Ball Odds with all of yesterday's games factored in where we're allowed to know the score. We might even have all of them by the time you read this.

And don't forget to check out the new brackets.

Brackets

The classic brackets, modernized

Maine Basketball RankingsLucas McNelly

Sean Stackhouse, he of the Stax Index, has been trying to convince people for a little while that the PA address before games could use a little...help.

You see, instead of just reminding people that the officials are there to officiate and that there's a shortage of those officials, what if we gave people a small reminder of a few of the rules they seem so perplexed by?

I'm a big fan of this idea. I think we could print 15-20 of these misconceptions on the back of the program or hand out laminated cards. Now that wouldn't solve the problem, but it couldn't hurt, right?

Right?

Cooper left last night's Mavericks game with an injury after this Flagrant 1 by Aaron Nesmith.

Afte the game, Mavs coach Dusty May said Flagg had "left shoulder soreness" and would be evaluated in a couple of days. It doesn't sound serious.

This is the one football fans have had circled for the entire year: TA and Bonny Eagle.

Both teams have kept up their end of the bargain. They're both 7-0 and in dominant fashion. They're 1 and 2 in the Power Rankings.

Bonny Eagle has played the harder schedule so far, which TA has been more dominant. The real question is if TA has been dominant enough to offset Bonny Eagle's harder schedule? So far they have, but that won't mean anything at 1pm.

If Bonny Eagle's going to get their first win in the series since 2019 (h/t Jarod Richmond), they're going to need a big day from Lucas Klehn, much like TA got from Connor Ayoob in last year's matchup.

What you might hear is that the winner here gets the 1 seed. Bonny Eagle wraps up the 1 seed with a win, thanks to that tougher schedule. Thornton Academy will need to win next week against Massabesic (or hit some crazy parlay that might involve a tie-breaker?)

Jarod and Ethan Snow will have the call for WHOU in case you can't make it to Saco.

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