29 Points

Let's start in the County, with a rematch of the legendary 10-9 game from earlier this year.

Oh, you don't remember the 10-9 game? Let me refresh your memory.

10-9 was not an aberation. Nor was it a case of stalling. It was just a hard-fought basketball game between two evenly matched teams with plenty of room for improvement.

You would expect scoring to be at a premium. The Model's pick for this one was Van Buren by 4.2, which is a bold pick. 4 points is a LOT in a game with this little scoring.

Let's go to Van Buren, where WHOU has only sent a camera and maybe not the best one they have.

In the first half, both teams came out firing, with Van Buren taking a 17-12 lead back into the locker room. If you're coming from, say, an Oceanside game, that might not seem like much, but when your best scoring night on the year is 26 (Van Buren) and 15 (Madawaska), 17-12 is a high-scoring game.

If you recall the game in December, Madawaska led 10-2 at the half and then held on to win despite getting shut out in the 2nd half. I had never seen that before.

After 3, Van Buren had stretched that lead to 23-15. But Madawaska rallied. They put together a 10-3 run(?) over the course of the 4th quarter to pull within 1, 26-25 with 25 seconds left. In this situation, fouling is a solid strategy, but Van Buren made their free throws. They win the re-match 29-25 (hey, 4 points!) to win their first game of the season.

These two teams will meet for a third time on February 7th in Madawaska.

Big Time Hoops is reporting that the MPA told the Oceanside boys to stop blowing people out with a threat of a postseason ban. I was looking into this story yesterday (this stuff always gets to me) and decided not to publish it without any further information. They do not appear to have any further information. They appear to have less.

I'm going to hold off on saying any more about it until I know more.

What I do know is that Oceanside is outscoring their opponents by 42.18 points a game, which is the highest in the state by a staggering 0.4 points a game. I haven't heard any reports of the Penobscot Valley girls getting the same warning. I also haven't heard of any warnings to the Wisdom girls last year, who outscored their opponents by over 44 points a game. Or to the Southern Aroostook girls. Or anyone, for that matter.

I can also tell you tonight's Oceanside/Morse game will stream here:

We've got yet another 1K scorer.

Deprey is a junior and the latest Caribou Deprey to reach the milestone.

Getting to 1,ooo points as a junior can go a long way toward your Mr./Miss Basketball case, which is an awkward segue into this next section.

I wanted to know the state of the Mr. Basketball race (Miss Basketball will almost definitely be Maddie Fitzpatrick of Cheverus.) So I asked 22 people from around the state--a collection of Media, Coaches, and ADs--to get an idea of where we are. All of the ballots are anonymous and I didn't include a coach or AD from a school with a top candidate. I asked each of them to rank their top 5 and in the end, 16 different players received a vote. No one was on every ballot.

Remember that Mr. Basketball is a career award.

First, this was my ballot.

My thinking was Mercier might be ahead at the moment, but Galley will probably get Oceanside to at least the Regional Final and score over 100 points in the process and that'll look pretty, pretty good to the voters. And we all know that points scored in Portland are worth more than points scored in Bangor.

Here's the results (first place votes in parenthesis):

It's close!

Well this is a first.

Noble, long the cellar-dweller of AA, is in the Game of the Day. Last year, they started their up-swing, but not enough to avoid relegation, so they're down in A South, where their improvement continues. They've got the highest scoring team in the region and are second in the Heal Points.

They head to Falmouth. The defending regional champs are humming along, like always. They're 2nd in scoring despite playing one of the hardest schedules in the region.

Can Noble make a statement in their new region? Can Falmouth widen their lead in the Heal Points?

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