The Stearns Title
Looking back on the 8-Man Small School Title Game
It's Week 3, which means things are starting to get going. Nearly everyone has played 2 games and we're starting to get a better sense of where teams are. We'll know a lot more after this week.
On Monday, Jay Baines and I did the weekly overreactions podcast where we go around the state. There will be a different media person overreacting each week--just like last year. New this year, I'm doing a second podcast a week that'll be a long-form interview. Most of them will be coaches, but there will be some others as well.
This week the long-form interview is Stearns football coach Cody Herring. Herring led the Minutemen to their first football title since 1998 in a thriller over OOB. We, of course, talked about that, but also the importance of the title to Millinocket, and how they're now fully an 8-man school. And since Cody is also a basketball ref (he did the Caribou/Biddeford state game), we had to talk basketball. In a fun twist, Cody came with questions for me at the end. So if you want to know the best tourney game I've seen, that's near the end (the Caribou/Biddeford game is up there).
Available on YouTube, Apple Podcast, or wherever you podcast.
If the 2/week schedule works all football season as well as it's working now, I'll try and continue it during basketball season.
This is where I encourage people to subscribe to the site, if they aren't already.
Up in Guilford, Chase Lander entered last night's game needing 3 goals to become the first Piscataquis player to reach 100 goals for his career.
Connor Magliozzi
Elsewhere
Melvin Moyemade's penalty kick gave TA a win over SoPo...Bryce Fletcher scored twice in Monmouth's win over Mt. Abram...Ned Grieg found the back of the net twice in Marshwood's win over Massabesic...Deering got one shot on goal against Portland, but Nathan Hebert made it count in a 1-0 victory...Gorham's Moises Ntango had a hat trick against Westbrook...Hammod Al Sultani scored twice in Biddeford's shutout of Falmouth...Vivienne Corriveau scored twice as Yarmouth dominated Fryeburg...TA's Cami Sibille scored 4 times in a shutout of Marshwood...Mackenzie Woods scored 5 times as Dirigo got their first win of the season...Zabina Zimmermann's OT goal lifted Cape over Wells.
This week, I got to test a website feature with a little help from Greely football.
I uploaded their Hudl stat report into the boxscore import I built on the website. It'll read the PDF, match the names and numbers on the report to the rosters for each team (assuming they've been entered) and store a box score on the game page for that game, which also has some extra information like the prediction and rankings of each team.
It should also be able to handle soccer and field hockey.
But wouldn't it be great if you could look up the stats for each team and they were all in one place? We'll get there eventually.
Also...
Volleyball!
The volleyball model is ready to go...sort of.
The schedules are loaded and the Excel file is set up, math-wise. I still have to put everyone in the correct class, but the math is ready to go and it's somehow the most complicated of all the Models.
In short, the Model treats each of the 5 sets as a separate game, runs the Win% math on each of them, and then does an average of all 5 sets. If the game finishes 3-0, then sets 4 & 5 are a 100%/0% split.
You can add sets in the scoreboard.
And it'll look like this:
Refs
Because it's never too early to think about basketball, Maine's own T.J. Halliday hosted an informational video about the rule changes for the upcoming high school basketball season. And because Halliday clearly assembled the power point himself, it's full of images and clips from Maine games, mostly Bangor.
There's also a number of changes and tweaks you'll want to be aware of--changes to "legal actions while on the floor" and goaltending were two that stood out to me. Did you know that if you block a free throw it's a technical foul? Typing it out now, that does seem obvious, but I've never seen it happen. I can't even imagine the scenario where that would happen, other than a player choosing chaos and trying to get himself tossed. There's also a change to the "slap the backboard" rule.
I don't know why YouTube isn't let me embed it here, but...
Bangor Daily News reporter Emily Burnham is going to appear on Jeopardy!
Ethan Andrews
There's still time to register for the Waldoboro Half Marathon.
It's wicked hard!
There's a couple of football games on Thursday, but the Stax Index takes us to girls soccer where Brunswick is hosting Camden.
Both teams are off to good start. Brunswick's only slip was against a very, very good Cape Elizabeth team.
Camden is unbeaten, which is underselling it. They've yet to give up a goal.
But if you look at the schedules, Brunswick has played a much, much harder schedule than the Windjammers and it's not even close.
This is always the question with a schedule full of blowouts. Is Camden really, really good or is their schedule really weak? A trip to Brunswick will certainly add some clarity to that.
And there's seeding impacts.
This might be on NFHS?
The rest of the Model's picks for today's games are after the jump.