This story was originally published in contributor Lucas McNelly’s Maine Basketball Rankings’ newsletter. To receive his newsletter directly in your inbox, subscribe here.
There’s a day every year in the tournament when the tournament goes full tournament and gets nuts. Sometimes it’s in prelims. Sometimes it’s the first day of quarterfinals. Sometimes it’s the Regional Finals, but there’s always a day when it gets nuts. You see it in our tourney. You see it in March Madness. It’s inevitable.
Yesterday, the tournament got nuts. And it got nuts quickly.
Wisdom vs. Central Aroostook
Let’s start in the morning where the Wisdom and Central Aroostook girls are tied at 34 with 8.2 seconds to play.
Let’s go to the tape!
That’s Charlie Pierce with the game winner! Or not.
As you can see in the screenshot below, the ball was clearly still in her hands.
The officials went to the tape and correctly waved off the shot.
Replay worked!
Here’s where it gets fun: She got fouled. If you read some of the chatter online, people were wondering why they used replay to award a foul and not, say, other things. Well, they didn’t. And they can’t. If we advance a few more frames, you can see the official has clearly raised a fist to indicate a foul in real time. So the shot is no good, but the foul stands.
I’m honestly not 100 percent clear on exactly how the foul at the buzzer works in regards to replay and whether that can be reviewed. My guess is it cannot.
So Charlie Pierce went out by herself with the game on the line.
Central Aroostook — who, according to the Live Stats, only played five players — was led by Lily Burtt with 16
The D North girls
The D North girls was one of my picks for Region of Death, with all four remaining teams having at least a 20 percent chance of winning the region, according to the Gold Ball Odds. So it wasn’t a shock to look at the updates coming from Bangor that showed the No. 1 seeded Bangor Christian Patriots on the ropes after Schenck put together an 8-0 run in the third quarter. Bangor Christian would answer with their own 8-0 run and Schenck would answer that with their own 7-0 to put the game out of reach and there went our second 1 seed.
Matt Junker of the BDN has a write-up.
READ MORE TOURNEY COVERAGE
At the Expo, the Mount Ararat student section decided the introductions of their rivals from Brunswick was a perfect time to catch up on current events.
Mount Ararat started slowly in the quarterfinals and they were sure to not do that again. They went out to a 16-5 lead on the defending champs before Eva Harvie hit a 3. Brunswick would then get it down to 4 at the end of a pretty chippy first half.
Brunswick tied the game, but Mount Ararat scored the final 8 points to eliminate the champs. Julianna Allen led all scorers with 19.
The Eagles will play GNG after the Patriots’ Abbey Steele hit 6 straight free throws to fend off a Marshwood rally. Ella Kenney scored 20 to lead the Patriots. Sarah Theriault had 14 & 8 for Marshwood.
A North upsets
Back in the peak days of A North, when the region had 12-13 teams, it had a regular habit of chaos. Seven seeds were routinely in the Regional Final and it seemed like anyone could beat anyone anytime. And they very often did. It’s not quite like that anymore, but much like an aging superstar, A North can dig deep every so often and bring it. And Wednesday the A North brought it.
First, the Hampden girls held Cony to 22 percent from the floor in the second half, and Aubrey Shaw went 4 for 4 from the line in the final minute to help Broncos oust the defending A North champs.
That’s a minor upset.
The Camden girls pulled off a major upset.
The Lawrence girls were one of the seven remaining unbeaten teams in the state. They entered Wednesday third in the state in scoring, fourth in point differential and third in percent perfect. You could make a strong argument that they were the most dominant team in the state and had the front-runner for next year’s Miss Basketball race in Maddy Provost. You could make that argument, and I don’t think anyone would argue with you outside of Penobscot Valley or Oxford Hills.
Well … Camden Hills didn’t care about any of that. And perhaps more importantly, was starting to get healthy. The Windjammers started fast, opening up a lead and holding Lawrence to 18 percent from the floor in the first quarter. At the half, they had a 6-point lead and people started talking.
They pushed the lead to 13 after 3, partly because Lawrence shot 13 percent from 3 in the first three quarters. They led by 15 with 4 and a half to play and you had to think Lawrence would make a push — and they did.
Lily Gray hit a three to cut it to 11. Then another one to cut it to 7. Maddie Provost hit a 3 to cut it to 6. But Camden held on. They made 16 free throws in the fourth quarter, including 11 straight over the final 2:45. Clutch.
And that took us to the evening session.
In the first game, Falmouth made short work of Fryeburg.
Davis Mann had 39 points and shot 68 percent from the floor and Fryeburg had absolutely no answer for him. Since the game wasn’t close, I tried to come up with solutions.
In the end, Fryeburg used the last one.
There was a lot of excitement at the Expo for the showdown between Jamier Rose and Theo Pow, which initially didn’t live up to the billing. Noble sold out of stopping Pow, face-guarding him for most of the first half. It was effective. He got credit for a tip-in that I’m not sure was him and didn’t have a real field goal attempt until he got a steal with 30 seconds left in the first half. But his teammates kept them in the game. In the third, Cole Perkins tied the game at 40 and it was tied at 44 after three quarters.
Meanwhile, Jamier Rose was doing Jamier Rose things, flinging full-court passes and emerging from nowhere for a steal, and flying into the paint for an acrobatic layup. You really want to see him in person. It’s so much fun.
Noble pulled away for the win. Rose had 21 points and 8 assists. Bryce Guitard added 22. And the Knights held Pow to 8 FGA.
That sets up a Regional Final between Falmouth and Noble that projects to be awesome. I would highly recommend getting yourself to the Expo.
Nolan Ames, future Mr. Basketball?
Back in Augusta, Camden nearly pulled off the extremely rare double upset behind a massive performance from Nolan Ames.
Ames put up 36, grabbed 12 rebounds, had two steals, and blocked two shots. Having seen him play a couple of times this year, I can’t say I’m surprised. He’s awesome.
Messo won by two to survive and advance. Ty Bernier led Messo with 22.
Is it too early to start talking about Mr. Basketball 2026, and is it Ames?
Elsewhere
Kaymen Sargent had 16 as Caribou beat MDI … Will Francis’ 24 helped the defending champs advance to another Regional Final…Aiden Kochendoerfer had 19 as Hampden held Oli Higgins to 6 in a win … Madelynn Deprey scored 18 in Caribou’s win over what’s left of Ellsworth … Kelsie Dunn’s 17 led Erskine to their first Regional Final in 32 years … Harry Louis dropped 27 on Buckfield … St. Dom’s got 15 from John Brocke to beat Telstar … .Logan Doughty had 21 in Gorham’s win over Sanford
The Windham boys have been one of the best teams in the state all year, but have struggled down the stretch. I suspect that’s injury related and the question is if they’re back at full strength.
It’s the No. 1 scoring offense versus the No. 1 scoring defense in AA.
