Ram Tough

In the Game of the Day, Gorham's defense showed up. The shut out Scarborough in the first half and led 19-5 at the half. Ellie Gay had 20 in the win that puts Gorham back in first place in AA South.

The boys game was considerably better, as Gorham outlasted Scarborough by 7 to extend their lead in the Heal Points.

I was taking stuff to the dump when I got a notification on my phone that the Lincoln Academy/Mount View game had just started, and since I had my press pass on me, I headed over.

Lincoln Academy was up 23-9, but Mount View battled back.

Noah Hurd's buzzer-beater 3 cut the lead to 5 at the half.

Mount View would take the lead, but Lincoln answered. The score was tied at 51-51 and Mount View missed one of those "omg how am I this open?" layups (those are the worst) and Lincoln put together a 13-2 run to finish off the Mustangs.

Gabe Hagar led Lincoln Academy with 26. Noah Hurd had 23.

Don't tell my wife I went. She thinks there was a really long line at the dump.

I have a small Lincoln quarrel.

They have a fantastic logo right now.

The Eagle as part of the A is chef's kiss. Honestly, it's a top 20 logo. Simple. Clean. Effective

But when you're at a game, there's 4 different "LA" wordmarks in view and none of then are this one. If I was in charge, I'd go all-in on this logo.

Elsewhere...

Bailey Breen had 28 and Sophia Daggett had 13 & 10 as Oceanside crushed Erskine...Nathaniel Wainwright had 24 for Dirigo...Arianna Bradeen had 21 as the Mount View girls beat Lincoln...The Gorham Boys rallied down 12 to beat Scarborough. Gabe Michaud had 25 for the Rams and Aston Leclerc had 23...Gabe Galarraga's 20 paced SoPo...Jameson Fitzpatrick had 20 as Cheverus beat Bangor...Evan Legassey put up 22 in Deering's win over Bonny Eagle...Nate Hebert had 26 (with 6 3's) and John Patenaude had 25 (5 3's) as GNG rolled...Damon Martin scored 20 in Poland's win. Sacopee Valley's Dylan Capano had 16 & 10 and Silas Nielsen had 12 & 21(!) in the loss...St. Dom's Taylor Varney dropped 27 on Traip.

You hear all the time that "Maine is really a small town" and if you want evidence of that, look no further than the Chance Mercier ejection story.

Ejection

The refs determine the outcome of a game.

Maine Basketball RankingsLucas McNelly

Within a couple of hours of publishing the newsletter, I'd learned what Mercier said to warrant the tech (and let me tell you, it did NOT warrant a tech), had it confirmed a couple times, and heard stories of other incidents involving this ref. I now know more about this guy than I need to know. And it wasn't Ellsworth fans. It was people from all over the state.

It's a weird little community we've got here. But also, a great community.

Let's look at the B North Tourney Odds on Saturday morning.

And then Caribou went and beat Orono, 57-50. The Model had Caribou as one of the top 15 teams in the state and this is where I remind the Caribou faithful that in that championship run, this was the first outlet to say they could do it.

And now?

This is obviously going to be an insanely tough bracket, but remember that in realignment, there was a plan that got pretty far down the road where Oceanside, Medomak Valley, and Lincoln Academy would move to B North. So we'd have 8 of the current top 27 in one region. That would have been nuts.

Honestly, this is an improvement from last year.

That photo is from Saturday night's game. It didn't matter, but, you know. It might!

Of course, Saturday night was another triumph for the Flaggs.

But also for WHOU, who did another stellar job, this time with Brandon Terrill on play-by-play and Greg Levinsky on the sidelines.

I think there's a couple of takeaways from these two games: 1) the Maine high school basketball community is STRONG. 2) The local media talent we have in this state is higher than it should be. 3) The Flagg twins are awesome basketball players and better representatives of our state.

And I think a lot of Maine kids learned just how much stronger and faster top-end D1 talent is.

Here's hoping Duke schedules a game next year in Maine and until then...

Speaking of media talent in Maine, you can't have that conversation without mentioning Don Shields, who reached a milestone with the UMaine women.

Don and his "Bingo!" call are a staple in the Midcoast and he's long been generous toward up-and-coming broadcasters (and people who make large spreadsheets).

There's a joke during Tourney Week that if the scoreboard disagrees with Don Shields, the scoreboard is wrong.

Here's to another 500.

We head to Madison where the Bulldogs will be hosting the Mount Abram Roadrunners (big fan of this logo too), two of the final 3 unbeaten teams in C South.

Mount Abram is 7-0, but they've only played 1 team in the top 50, a 4-point home win over Maranacook. Other than that game, they've outscored opponents by over 35 points a game, but 5 of those 6 teams are outside the Top 100. So this is the second highest scoring team in the state (Oceanside, 89.7), but it's hard to know how much weight to put into that.

Madison, on the other hand, lives on the defensive end. They're one of the lowest-scoring teams in all of Class C, but they only give up 39.8 points a game. It's a weird resume, because even against an Oak Hill team that gives up 60 a game, they only scored 35. They won, but still.

Can Madison score enough to stay with the Roadrunners? Can Mount Abram score on Madison's defense? It's the age-old question of offense vs. defense.

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