We head into our tenth calendar year of high school basketball coverage by thanking the parents, players & coaches that have extended their support to our seven person team as we bring our coverage to 2017.

 Thank you to our newest Click to view our Gold Level Members  (who will have access right on our website to every game we cover this season IN FULL).

Brian Lynch of Alvirne basketball

Jim Mulvey of Portsmouth basketball

Eric Saucier of Conant basketball

Mark Elmendorf of Bedford basketball

Matt Regan of Bishop Guertin basketball

Mike Dunham of Londonderry

Mike Gasper of Goffstown basketball

Mark Collins of Groveton basketball

Bill Clarke of Coe-Brown basketball

Trevor Howard of Littleton basketball

Jim Hill of Monadnock basketball

Mike Rathgeber of Inter-Lakes basketball

Mike Soucy of Hollis-Brookline basketball

Tom Viviano of Hampton

Don & Jo Lamprey of Hampton

Chris Morse of Hampton

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 Every year the two week Holiday break gives us a pause in the regular season and an opportunity to see teams from two or three different divisions competing under one bracket.

 Experience will tell you that you need to look at holiday tourneys from the proper perspective. Sure the results can be a glimpse of what's to come this season but they also can be affected by coaches playing every guy all the way to the end of the bench and doing more teaching on the sidelines than actual coaching. Sometimes the opening round games feature more effort and enthusiasm than the championship match-up that ends up as the third game in as many days.

 

 The games don't count in the standings and the bigger picture is to learn and improve for when the games count. Still there is insight to be gleaned from the ‘exhibition' games.

 

 Today in our first article of 2017 we take a look at what we learned over the past 10 days.

 

 The best team in all of Manchester is……………..Lebanon??

 Minus pre-season player of the year KJ Matte, recovering from a foot injury suffered against Winnacunnet in our Coaches for a Cause Jamboree, the Division II Raiders won three straight games against Division I opponents to roll to the Queen City title in only their second appearance in Manchester.

 With Matte out Graham Chickering has become Lebanon’s facilitator on offense. Head coach Kieth Matte runs a lot of his offense through the high post and at 6’1 Chickering has the size & intelligence to read the defense and deliver the ball to all-state shooting guard Ryan Milliken on the wing or forwards Matt Eyelander (who had a very good tournament) & Chris Nulty on the baseline.

 KJ hopes to be back by the time Lebanon squares off with pre-season #2 Hollis-Brookline on January 20th (a game we will have full coverage of) but what the Raiders proved last week was that they can win without him. A foot injury isn’t something you rush back from. This is a team built for March and not overly focused on where they are at the end of January.

 Trinity advanced to the final after wins over Manchester Memorial & Manchester West. Matt Lemieux’s team goes to the beat of sophomore point guard Jordan Santos and after an 0-2 start a sophomore heavy lineup needed the three games in four nights to see who fits where and  with whom out on the floor.

 Manchester West has struggled against zones in a 1-2 start to the season. Danny Bryson’s team is deeper than we thought in the pre-season and they have a closer in Jacobee Burpee when they get to crunch time. Right now West is a team that shoots themselves in & out of games, but it’s early and when West attacks the rim there aren’t many teams better in Division II.

 It was telling late in Central’s overtime loss to West when the Little Green took the ball out of bounds and Dave Keefe wasn’t signaling what play to run. That tells you that it’s more about basics than end of game situations (Keefe has won two titles in Durham, he knows what plays to run at the end of tight games..).

 Central is small…even smaller than the title team of a year ago that had 6’1 Jaylen LeRoy jumping center. Right now the only way they’re beating you is with defensive pressure, and there,,,with David Baracka and Antione Revere, is where Central can hurt you. That is where they become that team that you are up comfortably on in the third quarter and four minutes later you’re calling an exasperated timeout in a four point game. Central kids play hard, it’s in their DNA, and that is a very smart coaching staff.

 

 Not sure if you noticed but Division IV held their own last week………….

 Epping went to Keene and beat both Monadnock & Mascenic (something is going on over there..). Littleton went over to Hanover and beat the hosts two days after beating a good Mascoma team while Woodsville beat Franklin & lost to Stevens (minus Parker Smith) by seven in the same gym. In Farmington it was Newmarket beating Division II Kennett and up north Groveton beat both Division III Berlin & White Mountains over three nights.

  Division IV has a very solid Top 10 and then the division falls off a cliff at about a 20 point difference from there.

 I remember talking to Tim Goodridge & Doc Wheeler last season in Manchester and both echoed the same sentiment about their Division I race; every team had a fatal flaw and the team that corrected theirs by March would likely be the last team standing.

 That’s the exact state of the top of Division IV today.

 Every team has a flaw; Groveton (rebounding), Littleton ( They only have one player who can create his own shot against a good defense), Newmarket (their schedule so far), Woodsville (turnovers in bunches), Wilton-Lyndeborough (at this rate six players will be covering Trey Carrier by the first of February), Epping (take Jackson Rivers off the floor and they have no size), Derryfield (it’s all on Sam Anderson right now..), Portsmouth Christian ( still finding themselves…their offense last year was Kylani & four guys spread out), Pittsfield (looking for that marque win and they need to win when Cam Darrah has a box in one on him) and Farmington ( they’re young and the great unknown at this point).

 We’re going to learn more Friday night when Jen & I are up in Woodsville when Littleton rolls in and when the schedule starts a Newmarket/Pittsfield/Derryfield/Wilton-Lyndeborough/PCA rotation. Today ten teams have separated themselves from the rest of the division early on but each has a flaw to correct by March.

 

 The results are in from Nashua & Durham and they are….inconclusive.

 Merrimack won its second consecutive Chick-Fil-A Holiday tournament one week after handing Spaulding its first loss while Winnacunnet won the Oyster River tournament with wins over Timberlane, Marshwood (Maine) ( A Big Smooth Lewis Atkins sighting!) and Spaulding.

 Merrimack pitched an 8-0 fourth quarter shutout to beat Thornton Academy in the final one day after beating Nashua North in the semifinals. For the Tomahawks it’s a pretty simple formula; run everything offensively through all-state guard Ian Cummings and try to hold teams under 50 points by controlling pace & playing physical defensively.

 Danny McKillop is playing at an all-state level and no one is playing better defensively than Tim Goodridge’s team. Nashua North bounced back to beat Nashua South in the third place game (Game highlights) but it’s tough to read too much into either Nashua team after only one regular season game.

 Nate Mazerolle’s Purple Panthers went 12 straight minutes without a point against Thornton Academy in the semifinals a not so subtle reminder that they did in fact lose a 23 points per night scorer when DJ Frechette left for prep school. The reality is Alvirne (who lost to Thornton in the first round), South, North & Bishop Guertin (who dropped a pair of games south of the border over the holidays) have only played one game each…it’s too early for any serious analysis.

 Milford played Merrimack tough in the first round (something Goffstown & Souhegan were not able to do against South & North). The Spartans have a first team all-state guard in Ryan Banuskevich and enough depth on the perimeter for another run at Durham in March.

 Jay McKenna’s Warriors rolled to a 62-44 title game win over a Cal Connelly-less (home sick) Spaulding team at Oyster River. Both teams, ranked in the top 5 in the pre-season, rolled through lower division teams before playing what was really a meaningless final.

 The two teams will battle it out for real on January 10th.

 

  I like what both Concord and Keene are doing but that has little to do with the Holiday tournaments…

 The Concord team that went to overtime with Bishop Guertin looked nothing like the team that nearly had triple digits hung on them opening night in Bedford (Game highlights). It’s going to take time under first year head coach Dave Chase but expect Concord to get better by the week. Winning their first Capital Area Tournament in a decade is progress but they also beat a field of Division II & III teams. The fact that Concord hadn’t won the tournament since 2006 tells you how long the former powerhouse has been down.

 Matt Giroux picked up MVP honors after a title game win over Division III favorite Kearsarge Regional, as the Tide held all-state center Tayler Mattos to 8 points. Nate Camp’s team is being reminded just how valuable Trent Noordsij & Zach Mattos were to their title run last season. Off to a 2-2 start the Cougars struggled to beat an 0-2 Merrimack Valley team that lost their first two games by a combined 31 points.

 They’ll face another tough test tomorrow night in Campbell, a game Pete Tarrier & Jennifer Chick Ruth will bring you full coverage of.

 Meanwhile across the state Logan Galanes (27 ppg.) was leading Keene to its first Holiday Tournament in over a decade under first year head coach Kevin Ritter. The days of this tournament, very well run by Keene State College,  being a sad reminder of how low Keene had sunk by getting beat up by Division III neighbor Conant is behind them for now. Galanes and Jake Blaisdell (30 points in the championship game win over Smithfield (RI)) give the Blackbirds enough scoring to hang in there every night and a physical defensive team is starting to emerge under Ritter, a former Keene State standout from New York.

 In other results Coe-Brown picked up a pair of nice wins over Mascenic & Conant while Epping rode Jackson Rivers’ all-tourney performance to wins over Mascenic & Monadnock. I’m keeping my eye on Mascenic, those are two games you would expect them to win (a reminder as always…it’s only January 2nd).

 

 Inter-Lakes’ Zach Swanson plays with his back to the basket and 99% of kids’ reading this think he’s facing the wrong direction……

 Making the Lakers center not only unique but extremely tough to defend, simply because players today have a very hard time defending the post. Joey Glynn of Portsmouth, Tayler Mattos of Kearsarge and Swanson…am I missing anyone? Those are your three players who play with their back to the basket in the low post and last weekend Swanson put up a steady stream of 20/10’s on the way to the tournament MVP in Farmington.

 With Ryan Kelly & point guard Davis Jollimore’s ability to feed the ball into the post Mike Rathgeber’s team can beat you from the inside/outside. That means the Lakers are not relying on jump shooting eighteen nights during the season.  Swanson has a spin move to the baseline, a drop step to either side and an ability to finish through contact. That and the fact that low post scoring is as common as unicorns helps make him one of the best players in all of Division III.

 The Lakers beat St Thomas and Newmarket by double digits in the semifinal and championship game round to win the tournament over the likes of Farmington, Kennett, Portsmouth Christian and Pittsfield.

 Over in Gilford Trevor Hunt, with good ability on the low block but more of a square up forward, was leading his team to the Lakes Region title after a triple overtime win over Kingswood. Jim Cilley’s Red Raiders have designs on a Top 8 seed. To do that they, like Inter-Lakes, are going to have to prove they can beat teams outside of the Lakes Region. Winnisquam will come around with the return of Mike Lowery from injury and my Golden Eagles in Gilford are lurking but the two best teams in the area are Belmont & Inter-Lakes. A game against Campbell on January 17th will be a good measuring stick game for Belmont (and a game we will have full coverage of), as will games at Mascoma and at home against Monadnock.

 

 Random Holiday tournament observations…..

  We talked about the line in Division IV that separates the Top 10 teams from the rest of the divisions by twenty points, we are going to find that line in Division II with the top four or five teams over the next two weeks ( it takes considerably longer in Division III because there are so many teams and in Division I there is no line..)…..people are sleeping on Pelham a little bit, the Pythons lost games to Chelmsford, Billerica and Dracut south of the border over the break but Kyle Frank is a legitimate player of the year candidate in Division II and Mike Larson is doing a really good job in his first season as head coach…oh and some kid with the last name Brown hit nine three pointers against Dracut as a freshman…that would be Keith’s little brother Drew…………I like the way Bedford moves the basketball, Mark Elmendorf’s team played without Troy Meservey in the Queen City but Max Chartier and Liam Greene stand out for the Bulldogs and with their size they can switch on any screen without worrying about match-ups…..one day…deep into the future…the Queen City (still the best crowds of any holiday tournament for my money..) will have an announcer…so when Antione Revere drills a corner three in the final two minutes to the tie the game in front of a packed house against West you’ll actually hear his name called throughout the gym….that and warm-up music…this is a battle Pete Tarrier & I have been fighting for seven years over at Memorial……Expect Londonderry to bounce back from their slow start..anything that could go wrong for Nate Stanton’s team early on has, and they’re not defending, which is out of character for the Lancers, but Stanton is one of the best coaches in the state and when Londonderry finds their rhythm they are as good as any team in the state…we will be out to cover them Friday night against Matt Regan and Bishop Guertin……………they had a rough holiday tournament but as teams like Mascenic, Kearsarge and Inter-Lakes lose early on Eric Saucier has to be watching with the feeling that if Conant can just hang in there and get themselves a home playoff game, they’re going to be peaking right around March……..yes it was weird seeing Dave Keefe coaching Central at the Queen City……………..It was also weird not seeing Doc Wheeler on the sidelines…I wonder if he misses it as much as people miss him?............also strange to see Dover without Mike Romps, I’m hoping he will join me for a few games this year as a color commentator…how fun would it be to listen to Coach Romps help call a game??....Exeter’s Cody Morissette is terrific, as evidence by his being a second team all-state selection in the pre-season,,but get ready for younger brother Josh Morissette, still an 8th grader…..this kid is going to be a big time player in high school next season from day one………………..We have a new ‘They don’t respect us….they don’t even pay any attention to us’ team of 2017…..someone call Portsmouth Christian and tell them to bring the 2016 trophy to Salem…Paul Staude you’re off the hook buddy…….we made peace with PCA by March and I know we can do the same with the Blue Devils.................if you put Jackson Rivers (Epping), Trey Carrier (WLC), Logan Briggs (Littleton), Sam Anderson (Derryfield ), Cam Darrah (Pittsfield) plus Corey Gadwah and Daegen Perras (Groveton) on one team ..how many games do they win in Division I?............my Gilford Golden Eagles are struggling to finish in crunch time…hey it’s still early………….the three game run for Lebanon was just what the doctor ordered…there was a ‘is KJ seriously standing there in crutches?’ malaise that has gone away….they had great ball movement in the tournament run in Manchester…………..Paul Greenlaw’s Profile Patriots won the Gorham tournament with easy wins over Gorham (and my buddy Lance Legere) and Lisbon…Profile should be 4-2 heading into a trip to Colebrook,,….Josh Woods of Lisbon & Trey Carrier have a lot in common these days out on the floor…as in four guys following them every time they go to get a drink of water……..Portsmouth lost a pair of games without Joey Glynn in Massachusetts to Cambridge Rindge & Latin and New Rochelle (NY)…..the Clippers  are the best shooting team in the state as Cody Graham & Mike Sanborn have been terrific and Shon Parham had a big 22 point night at Keene before the break…..Memorial/Portsmouth Tuesday night will keep the scorekeeper busy…you can listen to the game here on the MOSN Network………………..the first Power Index Poll ranking the Top 15 teams in the state will be released here on the site on Tuesday with Justin McIsaac, Pete Tarrier, former Londonderry head coach Jeff Gustavson , Great Bay C.C head coach Sean Young & myself serving as the voters….just so you know where the lone #1 vote for Spaulding came from.

 

 Coming tomorrow: The first of our weekly scouting reports breaking down six teams from around the state using blind quotes from opposing coaches just as we do for the semifinals every year. This will be a weekly feature every Tuesday and only available to our premium access and Gold Level supporters.

 Happy 2017!