The S Quarterfinals Didn't Work

Most years, the Thursday of prelim week was quiet. You might have a prelim game or two, but there didn't tend to be much going on. Last year it was completely quiet. The night before Christmas and all that.

Not this year!

This year we had the Class S quarterfinals in Bangor and Augusta, plus 4 prelim games.

Let's start in Calais!

What a way to punch your ticket to Bangor!

Much further south (in the Game of the Day), GNG rallied at Cape in the B South 8/9 prelim.

But Cape would answer. They took the lead with under 3 to play on a Joshua Rosen three. GNG tied it up on a Isaiah Portas layup, took the lead with the and 1 and held on for the win, but not before quite a lot of complaining from Media Row at the Civic Center that Cape's stream didn't show the clock. There were a lot of people wondering how much time was left in the game, is all I'm saying. Seems like a preventable issue!

Michael Hoffer was there.

Gray-New Gloucester boys oust Cape Elizabeth in prelim

CAPE ELIZABETH—Gray New Gloucester’s boys’ basketball team has had no margin for error for weeks, so when the Patriots found themselves trailing late in Thursday evening’s Class B South preliminary round tournament game, they didn’t panic. Instead, they had host Cape Elizabeth right where they wanted. And with the

Hoffer's High School SportsMichael Hoffer

The quarterfinal games were...less good.

I've said for years that one of the issues with 5 classes is the math doesn't really work out to have at least 12 teams in each region, or at least it's quite difficult. That matters when you get to the quarterfinals because you inevitably have a handful of teams in the quarterfinals who are not, uh, playoff quality opponents and should be getting ready for spring sports. If you have 12, the bottom 4 don't make it and if you look at the regions around the state, the bottom 4 are usually weak. That's perfectly normal. With 8, they end up having to play Valley. It's not a problem unique to Class S. We had the same problem with AA, but we played those games at the schools, so no one paid much attention to the SoPo girls beating Noble 66-12. But play that game under the bright lights and suddenly it's a problem. The problem is the game shouldn't happen in the first place.

We did have an upset.

Anyway, we played 16 quarterfinal games and in 7 of them the winner doubled up their opponent...or much worse.

We did have some big performances.

• Ava Lerman went off for 40 in Wisdom's win over Easton.
• Mason Pelletier topped that with 42 in Easton's win over Wisdom.
• Pine Tree's Rhett Tyson had 29, 7 rebounds, and 8 steals against Rangeley.
• Calvin Richardson scored 26 points and pulled down 11 boards in Katahdin's win.
• Vinalhaven's Lydia Wentworth scored 17 point and grabbed a whopping 19 rebounds.
• Harper Conover notched 28 points, 8 rebounds, and 7 steals as Islesboro set a date with Valley.
• Pine Tree junior Chantal Mbonimpa scored her 1,000th point

Dave Dyer had a write-up for Varsity Maine.

Island basketball showcased, and more Augusta tourney takeaways

North Haven, Vinalhaven and Islesboro get chances to shine on the state’s biggest stage.

The Portland Press HeraldDave DyerStaff Writer

One of the nice benefits of getting stats from all three tournament venues is we have a lot of data to play with. Hopefully we'll be able to generate some reports and leader boards and stuff like that, but for now, I've got a master report that's been updating after every game (roughly depending on my access to the internet when the game goes final).

As of now, you can see stats for every game from Bangor and Augusta and you can filter it by region, gender, or team.

Here's the top 10 in EFF (or Efficiency Rating) for the Class S quarterfinals.

Monday, I posted the girls half of the annual Let's Pick a Cinderella! podcast episode and now it's time for the boys half. You know the drill: Jay Baines and I go region-by-region. We can't pick the favorite, we can't pick our teams (Medomak and Old Town, respectively), and people get mad when we don't pick them.

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I also recorded the intro and outro from the Civic Center. I'm not sure if I like that, visually. I think it could work.

When we get to the quarterfinals, it's almost guaranteed that the Game of the Day will be a 4/5 matchup. They're 4th and 5th for a reason. Today is no different.

The Edward Little girls finished 14-4 with three of the losses coming in a rough stretch late.

The Mt. Ararat loss makes sense, but the three in a row of it all is a red flag. Normally, if a team goes 14-4 and loses three straight, something happened in those three losses--an injury, maybe, or a shooting funk. But, with just 1 game on the other side of it, it's hard to say if the issue has been resolved. If it has, I think you have to mentally adjust that 1-point road loss to Bangor in EL's favor.

And if it hasn't, a 1-point loss on the road makes EL a slight favorite on a neutral floor.

This, and the rest of the quarterfinals, will be on NFHS.

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