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| By Dave Haley, Posted 03-04-2013 | ||
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(16) St. Thomas at (1) Pembroke Academy The Saints are back in the tournament after a win over Milford on February 22nd gave them the tie-breaker for the 16th and final spot. What that likely earns first year head coach Dave Sokolnicki's team is precisely one more game because they are tipping off Wednesday night with the only undefeated team in the state. The Spartans have four all-state players in Patrick Welch (20.9 ppg), Rene Maher (your unofficial assists leader), Matt Persons (15.4 ppg) and Kafani ‘Jordan'Williams (10 ppg.). Dominic Timbas has improved by the week and his rebounding gives this team enough to hold teams to one shot per possession. This is a group with a lot of wins under their belt but they have been snake bitten come tournament time. They have one of the best head coaches in the state in Matt Alosa and an 18 game trek is down to four games. It's championship or bust for the heavy favorites in Division II. (9) Plymouth Regional at (8) Pelham Pelham head coach Matt Regan is one of the good ones; a really good guy and just as good a coach but even he has sat back in wonderment at the 2013 edition of his basketball program. After starting the season 0-2 the Pythons ripped off six wins in a row that included victory's over five tournament teams, only to then turn around and lose four in a row. In a one week span Pelham beat Oyster River (13-5) and then lost to Milford (5-13). You get the sense he stopped trying to figure out the patterns of his team at about that point in the campaign. Pelham features a good core led by Jake Vaiknoras (16.6 ppg), Ryan Frank (9 ppg) and freshman standout/Players Lounge member Keith Brown (15 ppg). When they are hitting their shots this is a very good team and they have shown the ability to dial it up defensively. One team that knows that all too well is a Plymouth team that only scored 22 points against Pelham two weeks ago. Head coach Mike Sullivan has done a lot of very good coaching with this group and for a program that has been down the past six or seven years getting to the 9 seed is a nice step up. Lounge member Collin Sullivan does a nice job from the point while Kyle Reisert (11.6) & Jared Kuehl (10.7) have each had very good seasons. (12) Windham at (5) Oyster River Third meeting between two teams that have gotten a lot better over the second half of the season. Stuart Mitchell's team is 10-2 when they score in the 50's and just 3-3 when they don't. This is noteworthy because they are playing one of the best defensive teams in the Division, a Windham team that struggles to score in the half-court but can certainly take you out of what you are trying to do with their defense. Todd Steffanides' team wants this game in the 40's and coming off a win last week over Hollis-Brookline and earlier in the month over Portsmouth, it is a group that should bring some confidence that they can pull the upset. Andrew Lowman (15.6 ppg) will go toe to toe with one of the best scorers in the division in Nick Lazar of Oyster River, who averages 18.1 ppg. Should be a good one Wednesday night in Durham. (13) Coe-Brown at (4) Hollis-Brookline Two teams heading in very different directions; Hollis-Brookline earned the 4 seed (and possibly two home playoff games) by winning 9 of their last 10 games while Coe-Brown comes in having lost seven in a row including a home loss to 2-16 Kingswood. For Mike Soucy's team it has been a good defensive team that goes to the beat of its all-state backcourt of Connor Walsh & PJ Flaum. It is a team that can go nine players deep and gets nice contributions from players like Logan Blake, Shea Whalen, Tim Rencken & Nick Noval. They share the basketball and can count on their guards to get them shots in crunch time. It's a team good enough to make a run to Durham. For Coe-Brown the problem has been scoring. Except for an out of character 92-46 loss to Portsmouth, the Bears have played good defense even when they were losing seven straight games. They are competing on defense and that tells you they are still playing hard for head coach David Smith, but they can't score on the other end and on Wednesday night they face a team that holds even good offenses in the fifties. That doesn't sound like a recipe for breaking a losing streak. (11) John Stark at (6) Bishop Brady A battle of two teams that have had moments this year but don't come into the postseason with any real momentum. Brady's win over Plymouth on February 15th was the only win Mark Yeaton's team has had over a plus .500 team since January 8th. In that stretch they have played six teams that were .500 or better and have the one win over the Bobcats to show for it. One of those losses came against John Stark on February 5th and the rematch will feature two of the best point guards in the division in sophomore Jourdain Bell (18.7 ppg) of Bishop Brady and Nic Lloyd (19.2) of John Stark. (14) Merrimack Valley at (3) Lebanon Keith Matte has done a very nice job with his team this season and it is a team that has built some good chemistry over the course of the season. Dominick Morrill has given a team lacking a true center a nice lift on the boards and players have filled very nicely into their roles around player of the year candidate David Hampton. Matte's team beat Merrimack Valley 65-41 two weeks ago and will be a heavy favorite to advance to the quarterfinals Wednesday night. Merrimack Valley has some nice complimentary players in Andrew Alicia, Dylan Baer, Joey Brochu and Ryan Head but they are a team that has struggled against good teams. A trip to Lebanon could spell the end to an up and down season under first year head coach Sean Young. (10) Hanover at (7) Souhegan The Sabers are dealing with the tragic loss of their former teammate Tony Barksdale, a 2012 Souhegan graduate and a freshman at Boston University. Head coach Mike Heaney talked about how the death put everything into perspective and it will certainly be an emotional team that takes the floor Wednesday night. Hanover has played very good basketball of late and is your lower seed teams wanted to avoid. This is a group led by Lounge member Cyrus Rothwell-Ferraris (19 ppg), Liam Gantrish (12.3 ppg), John Flory (11.4) and Ryan O'Rourke (8 ppg) and they come in winners of 6 of their last 7 games. Tim Winslow is one of the most respected coaches in the state (few teams are better fundamentally than Hanover year in & year out) and they are going to pose a very big challenge to Souhegan on their home floor Wednesday night. (15) Goffstown at (2) Portsmouth A big challenge for a Goffstown team that was beaten by Portsmouth 77-46 back on January 22nd. The Grizzlies have two very good scorers in Jake Mount (13.2 ppg) and Tim Riehl (12.2) and they'll need to have success in transition if they are going to hang with the two seed in round one. The defending champions have figured out their identity after having to replace their top six players from a year ago; The Clippers are a good offensive team, prone to bad shooting nights but a great team defensively. They have the ability to lock you up and it is a group that has excellent chemistry & shares the basketball. Jim Mulvey has two go to scorers in Ben Landry (creating off the dribble) and Travis MacDonald (shooting off of screens), a lock down defender in Donovan Phanor, two good big men in Pat Glynn and Collin MacDonald as well as ball handlers in Zach Hansler, the returning Jack Mackey & the emerging Nick Mackey. Devon Wilson-Miles is a developing big man off the bench and one of the most improved players in the second half of the season has been Charlie Lehoux. That's ten guys, and they all contribute. Mulvey has gotten this team to believe they can go toe to toe with any team in the division (even the one over in Pembroke) and when they get to the big floor at UNH few coaches in the state are better at in game adjustments and pre-game preparation. I'm a huge fan of the program ‘America's Game: The Super Bowl Champions' on the NFL Network, a show that chronicles the season of each Super Bowl winning team. In the episode looking back at the 1981 San Francisco 49ers Dwight Clark, their all-pro receiver, talks about Hall of Fame head coach Bill Walsh and how much the players responded to him even though he was never a rah-rah kind of coach or a screamer in the locker room. In the episode Clark described the level of preparation those 49er teams had and his example was a game in which Walsh drew up a play in the week before a game against Atlanta. His head coach told Clark if he ran the route against the defense Walsh told him The Falcons would be in, he would catch the ball and no one would be within 15 yards of him. When the game was played later in the week Clark ran the route, caught the football and when he turned around no one was within 15 yards of him. Just like Walsh had told him. That's why they listened to him and one of the reasons Clark said players loved playing under Walsh. If you listened to him and did as he told you, he was going to put you in a position to play well and win a lot of games. The Portsmouth kids feel the same way about playing for their coach Jim Mulvey.