Looking back at Saturday’s action, let’s start with the 9 a.m. game at the Expo between the Spruce Mountain girls and Yarmouth. Both teams started slowly, like a true early morning game. Spruce shot 11 percent from the floor in the first quarter. Yarmouth isn’t your typical 6th seed and their length was bothering the Pingree sisters, but as great teams do in tournament play, they found scoring elsewhere. In this case, it was from Avery Bessey, who went 5-8 from 3 to give Spruce a much-needed jolt of caffeine. You need that in a 9 a.m. game.
Yarmouth hung close, but with 30 seconds to play, Spruce had a 6-point lead and seemed poised to advance. Then, Cate King scored on a put-back, Spruce missed a 3, Lauren Keaney (who had left the game for a spell with an injury) hit a 3 with six seconds left. But Yarmouth failed to call time, despite having three timeouts remaining, and Spruce ran out the clock. They dodged a bullet.
They’ll face the Medomak girls in the semis.
Medomak Valley got an early break when York’s standout big McKayla Kortes picked up her second foul 38 seconds into the game. The Panthers opened up a 7-point lead before Kortes checked back in, but she promptly picked up her third.
It was around that time Kytana Williamson decided she had seen enough.
She finished with 21 points, eight rebounds, and four assists.
Back in Portland, it looked like Wells sophomore Megyn Mertens was going to be too much for Lake Region. She had 21 and Wells led 35-27 in the fourth quarter.
But then Margo Tremblay took over. Her 10 fourth quarter points fueled a 12-0 Lake Region run to take control of the game. After two Maxons fouled out, Payton Fazzina’s 3 in the final seconds got Wells within two, but they couldn’t get off a final shot at the buzzer.
Lake Region advances to play Oceanside, who won handily (Bailey Breen had 33 & 15), but Biddeford’s Jordyn Crump made it interesting by going 5-5 from the NBA line.
The biggest upset was in Portland, where two-time defending regional champion Falmouth squared off against theWestbrook boys in A South.
The storyline with Falmouth has centered on two things: Chris Simonds and coach Dave Halligan’s quest for his 600th career win (he’s at 598).
For all their pedigree, Falmouth came out cold. Westbrook came out hungry, the definition of a team playing with house money. The Blue Blazes held Simonds to nine points and forced 25 turnovers to beat Falmouth 50-43. And it could have been worse. Westbrook lost David Mbuyamba (15 & 8) and Gio Staples (8 points) for stretches with injuries and Mike Shungu missed 2 monster dunks that would have brought the house down.
The Blazes will face Noble, who made a statement with a 76-50 win over Greely. Jamier Rose was everywhere for the Knights. I had him at a near triple-double with 24 points, 8 rebounds, 11 assists, and 5 steals as Noble won their first quarterfinal game since 1985.
Kade Ippolito had 24 points and 11 rebounds for Greely.
