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The Links at Outlook Final Thursday Thoughts 3/20/2019 Part I

By Dave Haley, 03/21/19, 6:15AM EDT

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Max Rose and Exeter passed their biggest test against Londonderry (photo by Matt Parker)

 Today & tomorrow we take our final look back at the 2018-19 season and next week we’ll look ahead to next weekend’s NHsportspage underclassman and senior select teams against BABC on Saturday, March 30th at NHTI in Concord.

 Those two games are at 2 pm and 4 pm with our select teams squaring off with one of the best basketball programs in the country.

  Look for a podcast with Justin McIsaac & I talking to BABC founder and former Celtics executive Leo Papile about the first of what we hope will be a huge annual event.

 

 Tonight is also the tip-off of the 2019 Great Bay Community College Seacoast Tournament at the Connie Bean Center in Portsmouth.

 

 6 pm: The Lakes Region Crew vs. The Cap City Swish

 7:15:   The York Wildcats vs. Patriot Scaffolding

 The two time defending champion Fighting McIsaacs will play Monday night at 6 pm at Great Bay Community College against Ruthless Aggression (you want no part of Ruthless Aggression) while NHsportspage (6-time champions) will face the winner of The Lakes Region Crew and The Cap City Swish at 7 pm.

 Admission is just $3 and goes towards the cost of the tournament.

 We will have box scores of each game and video highlights and play by play as the tournament moves on.

Now on to the final thoughts of the season.

 

 A look back and a health check on all four divisions………

 The Final Fours were all very well run (The NHIAA does a great job) but lacked the drama of previous years.

 Epping’s 50-45 win over Woodsville and Pembroke’s 50-42 win over Con Val in the semifinals were the only two of the twelve Final Four games played that were decided by single digits.

 Division I had one great team and a lot of good ones this season. Salem was the clear second best team in the state but they couldn’t beat Exeter in three tries.

 Merrimack head coach Tim Goodridge once told me,  “ Every time you win a title you can look back and see there was at least one game you could have or even should have lost. It's part of winning it all.’

 When Exeter survived Londonderry’s 15-2 second-half run in the semifinals I felt very strongly that they had passed their moment.

 Josh Morissette & Kevin Henry actually proved they had another gear at UNH and can you remember a better point guard duo, one a starter and the other the 6th man, than Cam Clark & Max Rose?

 Name another team in the state with a 3rd scorer as good as Ryan Grijalva?

 I’ll stop you…there isn’t one. Ethan Imbimbo dragged a badly twisted ankle around on Saturday because he knew people rarely get a moment like he and his teammates enjoyed; getting through the season 21-0.

 For head coach Jeff Holmes it was a special season no one will ever take away from them. Exeter owned the 2019 season in Division I.

 The addition of Goffstown, Windham & Timberlane didn’t help the division but it didn’t cause havoc with the seeding as we feared.

 Timberlane is a wrestling school and belongs in Division II, you risk killing the participation numbers in the program by keeping them in Division I.

 I wasn’t sure Goffstown was going to win a game and it’s my job to know these things. Not enough good things can be said about Ryan Cowette and the job his team did to qualify for the playoffs.

 Windham is building something with a very good head coach in EJ Perry but as a whole, their sports program will be hurt by not having Bill Raycraft as the athletic director anymore. We are lucky enough to deal with some terrific athletic directors throughout the school year and Bill Raycraft is right amongst the best.

 That’s a very big punch to the stomach for the sports program over on London Bridge Road.

 It was hard to look at Division II throughout the season and not see a top-heavy division. Pembroke and Oyster River were the clear #1 and #2 going into the season and Pelham had gone toe to toe with each.

 Con Val was 17-1 and impossible to dismiss. After that, there wasn’t a team you could see getting to the final Saturday of the season.

 Only there was…in North Sutton of all places.

 Nate Camp’s team's run back to the final four, Kearsarge has played in three championship games in four years, came one year after the Cougars were upset by Merrimack Valley in the quarterfinals at home. That was a team that was pre-season #1 and dominant for stretches of the season.

 Illustrating how hard it really is to get back to semifinals year after year and reminding you that this is a game played by high school athletes……..and rarely is anything known for certain.

 Rich Otis took over as Pembroke’s head coach two years ago and quickly made an impression on his team of underclassman by emphasizing defense. This didn’t make his new players very happy but over the course of two seasons, it made them much better players.

 The decisive run in the championship game was a 19-2 second quarter. Noah Cummings, Shea Shackford, Sean Menard  & Co. always seemed capable of scoring 19 points in a quarter but never capable of allowing only 2.

 That is the influence of Coach Otis and it led them back to the winner's circle last Saturday afternoon.

 Defense was also the theme for Eric Saucier at Conant, who won his 5th title as head coach in 10 seasons.

 Division III saw a season where different teams seemed to look the part as the best team in the league over the course of four months. At times it was Campbell, then we thought it could be Hopkinton, St Thomas had their moments, the defending champs Somersworth emerged late and rolled into the final game as the favorites before Conant took all the drama out of the preceding with lockdown defense.

 Anthony Gauthier, Peyton Springfield & Jake Drew seemed to get to the basket at will while Connor Hart knocked down jumpers on the baseline like he was swatting flies.

 Saucier’s team also had fought buying in on the defensive end for a time, as any team would, but in the end, they won with the best defense in a division full of parity.

 Epping spent most of the season confused and understandably annoyed that Division IV was being called a two-team race (guilty).

 We saw early on that Hunter Bullock was the best player in the division, what we didn’t know was how players like Shawn Hill, Adam LePage, Noah Bilodeau, and Peyton Rivers would evolve as a championship nucleus alongside him.

 Epping going to Newmarket and beating the Mules after losing to them by double digits at home earlier in the season was the moment the rest of us realized this was no longer down to Littleton or Newmarket.

 Epping beat Woodsville in the semifinals after being tied with two minutes to go (there was the Tim Goodridge game) and played their best basketball of the season in a terrific 72-61 championship game victory over Littleton.

 In the end, Nick Fiset had won a championship in only his third season and left little doubt who the best team in the division was.

 A division that remains the most top-heavy of the four in New Hampshire, and it’s not even close.

 What you will see at Plymouth State over the next ten years is Littleton, Derryfield, along with Farmington, Newmarket, and Woodsville as regular participants.

 I wrote that paragraph two years ago in my year-end column (Final Thursday Thoughts).

 Since that time the Final Four teams have been Newmarket (twice), Littleton (twice), Derryfield, Woodsville, Epping and Pittsfield.

 That isn’t going to change, the bigger school’s enrollment wise are going to keep beating the smaller schools and we are going to see three or four of the same teams at Plymouth State every season.

 It’s just the reality of one of my favorite divisions.

 

 Now on to two days worth of pressing topics………..with Part II coming tomorrow.

 

 1,000 point balls, your 30th birthday and seeing a Panda at the zoo are some of the most overrated things you’ll have in your life………

 Seriously no one can remember their 30th birthday, usually, the Panda, while very cute & cuddly, is eating a stick or looking for a place to go to the bathroom and that 1,000 ball? It’s ending up at the bottom of your closet.

 Trust me.

 I say all of this because I think we need to have a sit-down about the climb to 1,000 points. It is a really nice moment and stands as a career achievement, especially when it is done organically but in some cases, the means to getting there has cheapened the accomplishment.

 What we have seen a huge rise in over the past few years, as birthday parties have morphed from 12 kids at Chucky Cheese or a bowling alley to something that looks like a Super Bowl halftime show, is the manufacturing of the 1,000th point.

 In recent years I’ve seen kids shooting over 40 times in a 32-minute game, parents charting the course to 1,000 on their refrigerator, countdown posters in the stands and even a team being asked to step aside and just let the player score a lay-up in their final game so they can get to their 1,000th career point.

 If you are doing something after finding out, ‘Hey I just realized I’m at 958 points with 5 games to go, isn’t that cool?’ that is great, enjoy the moment when it arrives and appreciate the journey to get there.

 Anything above that and you have lost your perspective.

 The best man at my ill-fated wedding Chris Irvin scored 1,000 points halfway through his senior season at Alton high school during an all-state career. One night during college years later he asked me to grab his jacket out of the closet and I accidentally stepped on a ball that read ‘Chris Irvin 1,000 career points!’

 I asked him ‘ Do you want me to pick it up, or something?’

 He responded, ‘ No just toss it in the garage so no one trips on it.’

 True story.

 Again scoring 1,000 career points is a very nice achievement and we have been lucky enough to cover games where kids like My Man Colby Wilson of Epping, Joe Minson of Monadnock and Jimmy Stanley of Epping scored their 1,000th career point. They were all really nice moments. Parents & sisters came out on the floor, pictures were taken, I cried (only at My Man Colby Wilson’s) and the crowd applauded the effort of the player. It was really nice.

 And then the game went on..

 Each of these moments came in the middle of senior seasons. They didn’t come on the last night of the regular season as Kobe Bryant blushed at how many shots were being taken or parents finally threw away their ‘ Ok if he scored 33 points a game over the last 7 games we are getting to 1,000’ index card. They happened organically.

 Players have to be afforded big minutes to get to 1,000 points, that’s why an elite player in Division I or II often won’t get there because they had to sit for their first two years behind a talented upperclassman. Players from the lower divisions are often able to play as freshman right away because of lower enrollment numbers and out of necessity. Thus you’ll see more players get to the number.

 Scoring 1,000 points is a very nice accomplishment but there is a chance, an incredibly strong (think The Mountain in Game of Thrones) chance, it is being made into a much bigger deal than it really is.

 If you’re getting there organically that’s great, but if you are driving the coach crazy and preparing for the moment like the birth of your first grandchild you’ve overblown what should be a nice achievement and a fun moment.

 A moment that will pass very quickly because two years later Chris Irvin moved out of that house and whether it bounced its way into the garbage or a family of raccoons took it in as a rescue 1,000 point ball, the ball was nowhere to be found and has never been seen again.                          

 

Coming tomorrow..Part II

 

 

 

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