Day 3

What did I tell you about Mount View?

As far as 2/7 upsets go, this wasn't all that hard to call. I was pretty bullish on them in yesterday's newsletter and even more so off-line (The math is the math, but I try to hedge my bets on what I say I think will happen because these are kids playing, after all). They'd beaten the 1 seed in C South and pushed the 2 and 4 seeds in B South to the limit. Their issue was they just missed the opportunities for Heal Points on their schedule, so their seed was deflated. As everyone in Bangor saw, this is a very good team.

We had a similar situation in Augusta when #7 Hall-Dale blew out #2 Richmond. Richmond went 13-0 against Class D and 3-2 against Class C. Hall-Dale went 3-3 against Class B.

I don't believe for a minute that a higher class automatically means a better team, because it just isn't true. But as a whole, as you go up a class, the competition gets a little stronger. It just does. Is the 4 seed in A North automatically better than the 4 seed in B North? Not at all. But 1-8 in A is usually better than 1-8 in B.

There's a lot of talk today about Heal Points, and I'd like to point out that Heal Points aren't the problem. The problem is the schedules.

The teams don't play each other. And they don't play each other for a lot of reasons. Some conferences won't play teams outside their conference. Some just boils down to how big Maine is. Mount View to Fort Kent is a 4 hour drive. Maranacook to Caribou is 4 hours and 15 minutes.

You can't do straight W-L record. Look at this. How many tiebreakers would this require? 6? 10?

I think we need to do a couple things here. First, we should take the class weight in Heal Points back to 5 points. It was lowered to 2 to encourage more cross-over games and that's definitely what we got. But, the pendulum may have swung too far. Second, conferences have to open their schedules. I've yet to hear a good reason to keep them closed. Go back to Maranacook. How can Maranacook play teams in B North if the conference with most of the teams has a closed schedule? Third, there should be a minimum games played in your region. It doesn't have to be crazy. It could be as low as 6. 10 or 12 feels right. You're never going to get an everyone plays everyone schedule and until the day we do, we need the Heal Points.

Plus, find me another system where every game matters.

I went to Augusta for a couple D South girls games and saw what might be the stat line of the tourney so far from Waynflete's Lucy Hart:

Lucy Hart had 8 steals in the first quarter and did all her scoring in the first half. The Girls D South tourney record for 3s in a game is 5. Both Hart and McNutt Girouard had 4 at the half and didn't bother to try for the record. Go break records, kids! You only get so many games on the big stage. I promise the other team will be fine.

But, also: if you're going to lose 58-16, would you rather lose 58-16 or lose 58-16 because they broke the record for 3s made in a game? One sounds a lot better to me.

After that game ended, I raced down to Portland to try and catch the start of the GNG/Greely girls game, but I didn't make it in time.

Neither did GNG's hopes of joining the boys in the semifinals.

GNG got dominated by a team they beat by 42 all the way back on January 30th, which just goes to show that Tourney Week is a special beast.

Nathan Fournier has the full story.

Immediately after that, Brunswick dominated Freeport. You've got to think they're the favorites in the region now.

But of all the upsets tonight, this was the biggest one of all...

I'm teaming up with the MPA(!) to bring you live stats from both the Expo and the Augusta Civic Center. I know, I know. I'm as surprised by this as you are.

It's also pretty cool to glance at the computer and see a live score from Augusta.

You can also see box scores and visuals from all of the completed games.

Westbrook's Lyla Dunphe had the shot of the night.

This was called good on the floor, but if you slow it down, you can see that she was, in fact, late on the shot. Not by much, but late.

And that's a good segue to explain that with the semifinals kicking off tomorrow at the Expo, that means that replay is now an option for end of game buzzer-beaters. It's not available for the quarterfinals, because NFHS can't handle it. Seriously, that's the reason. But WHOU can! So we might be using replay tomorrow.

It's Midcoast Maine Day at the Expo today, as 5 Midcoast teams are in the B South semifinals for the second year in a row. In fact, when you add Spruce Mountain, 6 of the 8 teams are closer to Augusta than Portland.

Lincoln Academy is trying to get to their first Regional Final since their Gold Ball campaign in 1989. They've won 7 straight and in dominant fashion. Led by 1,000 point scorer Gabe Hagar, they've got the 8th best offense in the state.

They take on a York team that stumbled a little down the stretch before righting the ship against Spruce Mountain in the quarterfinals. They were the 5th most dominant team in the state and had the 2nd best defense in Class B

The might be a situation where the team that controls the pace controls the game.

Either way, it's going to be a great night of basketball at the Expo.

We might even get to use replay!

Note: in the email version of this, I accidentally wrote Gabe Lash instead of Gabe Hagar.

The Model's picks for tomorrow's games are after the jump.