The Ides of May

It's another rainy mid-week, which is a vast improvement over last year's string of miserable weekends. A lot of games have been rained out or moved around this week. One nice feature of the new scoreboard is it flags postponements easily and you can enter in a new date when it's announced.

Addison DeRoche, Cheverus' softball ace, has announced her college plans and will be heading the Florida State.

Cheverus softball ace Addison DeRoche relaxed, motivated following college decision

Since committing to Florida State, the Cheverus standout is feeling refocused and dialed in to trying to deliver another championship for the Stags.

The Portland Press HeraldDrew BonifantStaff Writer

DeRoche's Stags lead the state in scoring defense at 0.3 runs/game and earlier this week she posted a 20K stat line with a homer.

Elsewhere

Olivia French's grand slam led Oak Hill over Monmouth...Stephen Connolly scored 6 goals in NYA's win over Traip...Max Hayward struck out 12 in Cape's win over Freeport...Kaylin Hamilton's single walked off Woodland against Bangor Christian...Colton Jewett had 13 Ks in Cheverus' shutout of Windham...Lake Region's Dylan Blair doubled to break a tie against York...Vylet Robbins' 6th inning dinger gave Lake Region a win over York...Sidney Nicholls struck out 13 in a complete game shutout for Medomak over Erskine...Deering's Miles Lawrence hit an inside-the-park homer and struck out 16 in a shutout of Westbrook...Caiden Barnes drove in 5 runs in Noble's win over Windham...Sanford's Brody Baron's 3-run shot led the way over Bonny Eagle...Neve Ledbetter had 5 goals in Windham's win over Marshwood...Mountain Valley's Kegan Jordan tossed a 2-hit shutout of Boothbay with 7Ks...Lake's Haley Hamlin struck out 16 Fryeburg hitters...Brewer's Simon Harriman found the back of the net in double-overtime to seal a win over Lawrence.

Toby Nelson found this gem and posted it on Facebook: the Monson and Casco state championship game from 1968.

He put the full audio feed on YouTube.

And, even better, there's some archival video. From Toby's Facebook post:

Last year, I did a ton of research for Foxcroft Academy with the 1975 championship team celebrating their 50th anniversary, but that came to an end. I needed something else to keep the flame burning. Well, the other Maine school I have a deep love for is one I never attended. In fact, it closed nearly a decade before I was born, but it still has meaning because I spent my first ten years growing up in the small town. That school is Monson Academy. Yes, the old orange-and-black on Route 15 in Monson. A year before the school closed for good in 1969, the 1968 Monson Academy Boys Basketball team won the Class S State Championship.

Thanks to the dedicated team at Northeast Historic Films in Bucksport, I have discovered some video footage of the Class S Quarterfinals from 1968 at the Bangor Auditorium. This matchup features Monson Academy (14-4) and its Upper Kennebec Valley League (UKVL) rival, Harmony High School (7-8). The footage, sourced from the WABI TV 5 news archives, is in remarkably good condition for being nearly 60 years old. Although there is no sound, the video is definitely worth watching. I am still searching for additional materials, but for now, this will suffice. And Monson won this game, 61-55.

If you've never been to Historic Films in Bucksport, they do the Lord's work of film preservation. It's an amazing resource.

It's really easy to sit in the bleachers and comment that someone's jump shot is broken and there's no shortage of people ready with well-meaning suggestions, but what if you could really, truly fix a jump shot? What if you could hack it?

As Buffi and others in the field are quick to point out, though, the secret sauce isn’t identifying the ideal characteristics of a shot; it’s figuring out how to translate and apply that information to human beings. And even with great capture mechanisms available, jumper-hackers throughout the sector caution that we’re at the very beginning of what could be a long and winding road.

This is a very cool (and very long) article. In short: you need a lot of cameras and motion tracking and HawkEye and all that jazz that they probably aren't going to be bringing to a high school gym anytime soon. So don't expect this to translate to your kid hitting a big shot at the ACC in February of 2027. It's early stages.

Still, it's cool!

Can The Jumper Be Hacked? Inside Basketball’s Next Arms Race | Defector

In the summer of 2024, during the WNBA’s Olympic break, several Atlanta Dream players who weren’t competing in Paris had gathered for a midseason training camp of sorts. Anyone watching would have seen what looked like a typical 3-on-3 scrimmage. In reality, it was anything but. The Dream weren’t playing in any ordinary gym, but…

DefectorBen Dowsett

The basketball community lost a trailblazer this week when Jason Collins succumbed to cancer. Collins was a journeyman who played for 6 different franchises (including the Celtics) and averaged 3.6 points a game across 13 seasons.

But his impact was larger than stats. Collins was the first openly gay player to play in one of the 4 major American sports when he came out in 2013. He wrote about it in Sports Illustrated at the time:

“I’m a 34-year-old NBA center. I’m black. And I’m gay. I didn’t set out to be the first openly gay athlete playing in a major American team sport. But since I am, I’m happy to start the conversation. I wish I wasn’t the kid in the classroom raising his hand and saying, ‘I’m different.’ If I had my way, someone else would have already done this. Nobody has, which is why I’m raising my hand.”

If you show this to kids today, it probably seems weird to them that an openly gay player in the NBA was such a big deal (and it very much was), but maybe not as weird as the idea of using Sports Illustrated to announce it.

In a lot of ways, we've come a long way as a society and in a lot of other ways...not so much.

Collins was undoubtedly not the first gay player in the NBA. He very likely wasn't even the first gay player to come out to his teammates. But he was the first to come out publicly and there's a level of bravery to that we shouldn't diminish because...have you met people lately?

Jason Collins, 13-year NBA veteran and first player to come out as gay while playing, has died at 47

Collins, who had served as a league ambassador after his playing days, was battling brain cancer.

NBC SportsKurt Helin

If you've been watching the NBA playoffs (or at least paying attention while you mourn the end of the Celtics season), you undoubtedly saw Wemby's "record" 12 blocks against the Timberwolves.

Turns out it's only kind of the record.

Blocks weren't an official stat until the 1973-74 season, so some work has been done to recreate some of the gaudy numbers of Wilt and Bill Russell.

Victor Wembanyama vs. Wilt Chamberlain: Who’s the real NBA block leader?

A mystery looms above the game’s preeminent shot-blocker and the sport at large.

Yahoo SportsTom Haberstroh

IT is back!

The Patriots' schedule is out. Spoiler: it's harder than last year.

What's your early thoughts on the schedule? If you're wondering, DraftKings has the line at 9.5 wins.

So I found a small glitch in the Stax Index, so if you've been watching the Stax Indexes, you'll notice the numbers jumped this week. Long story short, it had an artifact from getting ported over from basketball.

Weather permitting, the Game of the Day takes us to Waldoboro where the defending Class B softball champs will be hosting Leavitt. Medomak, behind Sidney Nicholls, is second in the state in scoring defense at 0.4 runs a game (just a tick behind Cheverus) and 8th in scoring offense.

Leavitt doesn't have the same gaudy numbers, but they've faced a much tougher schedule. They've faced three teams in the top 15 of the Power Rankings (Oxford Hills, Edward Little, and Lake Region), whereas Medomak has faced one (Poland). So it's the classic dilemma of bigger stats versus a harder schedule.

If we go to the tourney odds, we can see it's essentially a coin flip between Leavitt and Medomak for the 1 seed in B South. They'll play again later this season, but the winner today (weather permitting!) will have the inside track on the 1 seed.

LCTV might have the stream.

I'll be there with live stats.

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