Gardiner Sweeps Lawrence

The Gardiner girls weren't at the top of very many A North preseason projections. In the preseason poll here, they finished 6th with 4 first place votes compared to 30 for Lawrence. And yet, they entered Saturday's game with Lawrence at 11-0 with a win at Lawrence in-hand.

Saturday, Gardiner used a big 4th quarter from Madison McMahon (she had 21) to turn a close game into 74-60 win for the Tigers and move to 12-0. They are basically a lock for the 1 seed.

As for Lawrence, who got 34 points from Maddie Provost, they're still just shy of a tourney spot and could very easily find themselves in the 4/5 game come tourney week.

I haven't run the numbers, but I'm guessing Gardiner's game against Oceanside on Tuesday will be Game of the Day.

Saturday I went to the Leavitt @ Lincoln Academy boys game, a matchup of two teams battling for seeding. Leavitt hoping to get a top 3 seed and Lincoln Academy trying to solidify their spot in the prelim round.

Behind 23 points from Chase Ober, Lincoln Academy pulled away late. All 5 of Leavitt's starters had 4 fouls late, which made it difficult to foul to stop the clock. You can imagine the feedback from the Leavitt bench. It didn't help that the officials apparently gave Colin Schlobohm someone else's foul, so when he fouled out with several minutes to play, it should have been his 4th.

With the win, Lincoln Academy has a stranglehold on a tourney spot. Leavitt dropped to 5th in a very cluttered 2 through 5.

Reece MacDonald scored his 1,000th point in York's win over Freeport. He finished with 16.

Elsewhere

Ava Ezell had 23 points to help Hodgdon overcome 35 from Fort Fairfield's Maddi Parks...Finn Connolly scored 24 as Cape beat Wells in OT...Mason Nguyen had 22 points and 10 assists in Medomak's win over Belfast...Jake Jamo's 21 led Poland over GNG...Lucas LeGage's 14 led a balanced Portland attack over Gorham...Natalia Silva scored 25 and Jordyn Crump added 20/7/7 as Biddeford rolled over Scarborough...Zoe Dellinger's 16 led Gorham over Portland...Abbey Steele scored 19 as GNG rolled over Poland...Natasha McDonald's 17 led Spruce over Oak Hill...Marley Jarvais' 20 helped Windham keep Falmouth winless...TA's Sienna Eldred had 19 and outscored Bonny Eagle by herself...Megyn Mertens scored 14 and Wells held off a late Cape comeback...Gabe Jackson dropped 20 on Marshwood...Cooper Morgan had 17 in Telstar's win over Vinalhaven...J.J. Carlo scored 13 of his 21 in the 4th as Waynflete rallied to beat Traip...Tyrie James dropped 22 on Falmouth...TA's De’Shaun Alston dropped 26 on Bonny Eagle.

If you're noticing discrepancies in the Heal Points between what I've got and what the MPA site has, here's one issue.

Winslow doesn't have a region, which means teams won't get credit for beating Winslow in their preliminary index (like Leavitt, above), which means that teams that beat teams that beat Winslow aren't getting the full credit.

Got that?

It also means that Winslow isn't in the C South standings, even though they have a 40% chance of making the playoffs.

I've sent it to the MPA, so it should be fixed soon. I had a similar issue earlier this year in S. These things happen.

Speaking of Winslow's chances of making the tourney, I added a feature to Tourney Odds (scroll down).

I'll give you a minute to look at this.

On each line, this tells you the range of seeds your team can get if they win a certain number of games and the likelihood of making the tournament. So for Winslow, 9 wins almost certainly gets them in the Tournament (97.1%) and they get the 7 seed in 13.2% of simulations.

Check it out!

If there was a Maine version of The Press Box, it would undoubtedly be interested in the MPA's updated media credentials policy.

This jumped out to me:

Credentials are not issued to message board websites, Facebook, Instagram, podcasters, or to websites that do not regularly contain MPA-based high school regular season content throughout the year.

I'm kind of between two opinions on this. I'm not sure that I would have been able to get a pass back in the day, had this been the criteria. And I think it's always great to get more non-traditional media outlets in the ecosystem, provided they're doing the work and whatnot.

However, there's no question that during Tourney Week all these people show up who you've never seen during the regular season and never see again. Some of them are TV news anchors who don't cover sports. Some are...I don't know what. YouTubers? Instagram accounts? TikTok? I get why they'd want to increase the barrier to entry.

But we all start somewhere. This started as a tumblr and anonymous Twitter account and somehow got a press pass (I'm pretty sure Don Shields yelled at someone). I guess I'd always err on the side of inclusion, but I absolutely understand the MPA's thinking.

Let's update the Wins Draft.

Tyler and Mike have a lead with Mike slightly ahead. Adam's in third, but I have fewer losses. Either way, the Greenville boys are killing me.

We're heading to A North, where the Hampden girls have won 10 straight to vault to the top of the standings. According to the Tourney Odds, they're the favorites to hang onto the 1 seed, but it's far from a sure thing with Mt. Ararat and Edward Little right on their heels.

But lurking is Camden at 10-2, with losses to Oceanside and Edward Little. Oh, and that 1 Hampden loss? It was to Camden. Can the Windjammers pull off the sweep and really turn the top 4 seeds into a free-for-all? Or will the Broncos further extend their lead for the 1 seed?

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