The holidays are behind us and we will be out at two HUGE Division IV games Friday night;

 Justin McIsaac and The Great Jon Kesty will be in Pittsfield when pre-season #1 takes on pre-season #2 Newmarket in a battle of unbeaten teams.

 At the same time, Jennifer Chick-Ruth and I will be up in the North Country when pre-season #3 Woodsville battles Trevor Howard’s Littleton Crusaders in front of a packed house.

 We’ll have all the highlights plus the post-game interview with the entire winning teams.

 Next Tuesday we will have coverage of two more games; Derryfield at Epping and Londonderry at Concord.

 All four games and every single game we cover this season are available as a full game video to our Gold Level Coaches & members.

 Note: The open house at Great Bay Community College has been pushed back a week due to the weather. The open house is now scheduled for next Thursday, January 11th

 Division I

 Manchester Memorial (1-1) at Alvirne (2-0)

 Big time match-up in Hudson as Danny Bryson's team looks to hold an Alvirne team averaging 81 ppg. in check.

 The Broncos have looked as good as any team in the state through the first month of the season and a big reason is their chemistry. Underclassmen like Paul Manzi & Cam Jones have stepped in & contributed right away as the offense, which goes through Max Bonney-Liles (24 ppg.), has had very good ball movement early on.

 First-year head coach Marty Edwards talked in our preview about the positive effect of winning the fall league title with Bonney-Liles sidelined and that has carried over into the regular season. Ryan Weston and Connor Lambert are knocking down open looks and the Broncos are playing man to man defense more than they have in recent years.

 If you are looking at the Broncos 79-51 win at Keene on Tuesday and dismissing it as ‘Well Keene’s not that good’ you’re missing the point. That game is the one road games Division I teams dread and Kevin Ritter has that (very young) team playing hard. To go out to Keene and put up 79 points & win by 28 is impressive.

 Some of the credit for the strong start goes to Edwards. A lot of first-year coaches would come in and try to push their ‘system’ on their new team but the former longtime Bishop Guertin assistant has largely let his players play and trusted the chemistry built up over the years.

 Memorial played as good half-court man to man defense on Tuesday night (against Portsmouth) as I’ve seen them play since the days of Mike Fitzpatrick. The Crusaders suffocated Cody Graham and Mike Sanborn at times on the perimeter and with two shot blockers in Manny Alisandro & Dinebari Adumene the rim protection is there if you get past the first wall of the defense.

 They’ll have to extend that defense past the three-point line Friday night. This Alvirne team has been playing together for a very long time and when they play unselfishly they are a nightmare to defend.

 

 Bishop Guertin (0-2) at Londonderry (3-0)

 Raise your hand if one week into January you had Londonderry, Concord & Nashua South undefeated while Bedford and Spaulding were winless?

 Stop, you’re lying.

 There are a couple of factors that explain Londonderry’s fast start.

 First of all when you have a good point guard who takes care of the basketball and sets the tone of your defense you’re in really good shape. Cole Britting does all of that and more for Nate Stanton’s team. He’s finding players in the right spot and few guards in the state are better with the basketball in their hands.

 The chemistry is also a lot better with this group.

 Chemistry is a funny thing, hard to even pinpoint with a lot of teams but you know as a coach when you have it and it is glaringly obvious when you don’t. Last year’s team, for whatever reason, just didn’t have great chemistry but Stanton feels like he does with this team.

 They could have folded up their tents and gone home after the terrible injury to Ethan Garofalo but they have circled the wagons (that’s two western analogies in one sentence if you’re scoring at home) and played well. Londonderry led Trinity 40-14 at the half Tuesday night, so make no mistake; this is a team we undersold in the pre-season.

 The focus has been on the little things and more accurately, the little things that the players can control; effort, defense, and rebounding. Ethan May and Dakota Bertrand have been very good early on as has sophomore Jack Anderson, who is a scorer in the Jake Coleman mold.

 For Matt Regan’s Cardinals, it is all about reps. Eight of the players who took the floor for BG on opening night were making their varsity debut, including two freshmen. Guard Kyle Fisher has been inconsistent offensively but he can be a valuable lockdown defender and showed it on Tuesday night in holding Exeter all-state guard to Cody Morissette to 9 points.

 John Begley, who missed last season with an injury, was the best player on the floor for stretches against Exeter and as this team gets more experience they will become a viable playoff team in the division.

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 Division II

 Kearsarge Regional (3-2) at Milford (3-1)

 As we reported on Twitter Tuesday Tayler Mattos (30.3 ppg.) and Tommy Johnson (19.7) has been suspended for 10 days for a violation of team rules. Neither played in the Cougars 52-48 loss to Lebanon or against Pembroke Academy last night.

 It’s a loss that is going to test the remaining nucleus as Nate Camp’s team will face four playoff teams in the 10-day span. The loss to Lebanon began a stretch in which Kearsarge will play Pembroke, at Milford and then Hollis-Brookline at home on Tuesday.

 That’s a difficult stretch for a team at full strength, without two players who account for 68% of their points it’s going to be brutal. Kearsarge has enough to compete but can they get out of the stretch at 2-2?

 Where does it leave them at the end of the season, having already lost any head to head tie-breakers with defending champion Lebanon?

 In Milford, they face a team that is at its best in the open floor. Dan Murray’s team is going to make Noah Tremblay, who went for 33 points in the loss to Lebanon, the focus of their defense on Friday night.

 

 Souhegan (1-2) at Merrimack Valley (3-0)

 The Sabers will be just fine if they don’t see Milford again for the rest of the season. Peter Pierce’s team has lost two close games to the Spartans, including losing a 6 point lead with 2:30 to play on Tuesday night.

 Freshman Matt McCool (Player profile page) has stepped right in and given the Sabers a third scorer, something they were missing a year ago. Anderson Geffard and Ryan Hickey (Player profile page) have been good early on and the results from the Nashua Holiday Tournament proved this is a team capable of a Top 8 seed in March.

 Merrimack Valley has the same expectation, making this an intriguing match-up between two teams that will only see each other once during the regular season.

 This is a Merrimack Valley team where any one of six different players could lead them in scoring game to game. That leaves the go-to guy as an open debate and it likely changes by who has the hot hand on a particular Tuesday or Friday night.

 Tomorrow night expect a close one and the team that executes better in the final three minutes to walk away with a good win.

 

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 Division III

 Monadnock (4-2) at Stevens (2-3)

 Nashua North just played their season opener on Tuesday night and on Friday night Monadnock will nearly be half-way through their regular season schedule.

 Add that to the lack of a shot clock costing us young officials to Massachusetts to the list of complaints.

 You see in order to referee in college you need to be able to officiate with a shot clock. It’s 2018 in Massachusetts and still, 1941 in New Hampshire so good young officials are flocking south of the border and I don’t blame them……….so get used to the 44-39 scores….they’re not going anywhere..

 As for Monadnock a very promising season, head coach Jim Hill does a really good job with this group, hit a major bump in the road when their power forward/best rebounder Tim Santaw was forced to sit out with lingering football injuries. His absence is a glaring weakness for the Huskies and it’s forced Joe Minson to feel like he has to score 25 points a night for Monadnock to beat upper-echelon teams in the division.

 Stevens hoped for more sets on offense and less one on one/isolation ball but it hasn’t materialized yet. This is still a team getting their varsity reps under head coach Matt Baird-Torney but with a whopping six straight road games next up on the schedule they better figure it out in a hurry.

 Division IV

 Woodsville (5-0) at Littleton (3-2)

 We’re going to learn as much about Division IV between 6:30 and 8:15 on Friday night as we have in the entire first month of the season.

 There have been too many 77-43 games to start breaking teams down by style points. We know all four teams we are covering Friday night are very good, they happen to be the Top 4 teams in our Division IV preview, but we need to see where they rank today.

 Woodsville topped our North Country power rankings in the summer and hasn’t done anything to change that opinion through four games. Garrett Olsen is a player of the year candidate, Cooper Davidson is one of the better big men in the division and Jamie Walker’s team is able to space the floor with shooters.

 Billy Green, Brandon Walker (player profile page) , Connor Bemis, Connor Maccini and Adam Cataldo have all knocked down shots from the perimeter (Woodsville hit 9 three-pointers against Hanover in the Holiday tournament) and that has given Olsen & Davidson space to operate one on one.

 Olsen is able to beat just about any player in the division off the dribble and when he does he has the ability to finish at the basket or kick it out to an open shooter. In his third season in the starting lineup, he has the trust of his head coach to make the right decision.

 It’s a team looking to earn a third straight Top 4 seed and a group in need of a win over Littleton.

 The Engineers haven’t been able to get over the hump against their division rivals and a win at Littleton would be a huge step confidence-wise. Trevor Howard’s team is going to apply pressure and utilize every portion of their home floor.

 Parker Briggs (Player profile page) has been huge in giving the Crusaders a knockdown shooter on the perimeter, the issues for Littleton have been rebounding. All-state forward Danny Kubkowski needs to get to double-digit rebounds and keep Davidson off the offensive boards on Friday night.

 The Crusaders also miss the shot blocking presence they have had in Logan Briggs the past three years but they have the size with Kubkowski and Brody Fillion to match-up with Davidson down low.

 The winner here earns the head to head tie-breaker after the team’s only meeting of the regular season.

 

 Newmarket (4-0) at Pittsfield (4-0)

 Two teams and coaching staffs that know each other very well. Don’t expect a ton of surprises but watch for how each team defends the opposing team’s all-state guard.

 We covered this match-up a year ago and Newmarket got back into the game by getting to the rim after settling for jumpers for most of the third quarter. Pittsfield has the size out front (Dylan Bocash) and in the paint (Josh Whittier) to bother Anthony Senesombath (player profile page). Expect head coach Jay Darrah to make someone other than Senesombath beat his team Friday night. Jamie Hayes’ team has the horses (horrible pun) to do it.

 Simon Cote is very solid at the point, Travis Moseley will do whatever it takes to get out of Pittsfield with a win and both Will Chase (player profile page) and Noah Pardy are vastly improved from a year ago. This is a deeper team than the one that lost at Littleton in the quarterfinals a year ago and Hayes knows exactly how to manage the touches & minutes. Hayes talked in the preview about being a more unselfish group this season, the proof doesn’t come in 50 point wins over Concord Christian, they come in tight ‘have to have it’ games like this. That’s something to watch for.

 The biggest difference for Pittsfield from last year to today is that Garrett Guerrero-Hadley has emerged as a viable all-state level point guard, allowing Cam Darrah to run off picks and play off the ball.

 They need Casey Clark to knock down shots because teams are going to cheat off of Darrah and dare Clark to beat them, and Whittier needs to finish against contact down low. His chemistry with Darrah when he takes the ball to the basket is apparent.

 As big as this one is there won’t be a banner raised when it’s over and unlike Woodsville & Littleton these two teams will meet again in Newmarket on February 6th.

 It does tell us where these teams rank today and for Newmarket is would represent their most substantial road win in years.

 You’ll see all the highlights and Justin McIsaac with the winning team post-game.

 

 The New Hampshire High School Hoops Show returns Saturday morning at 9:07 am. Pete Tarrier & Dave Haley re-cap every game from the Friday night schedule while covering all four divisions. We’ll have two coaches on the show every week and you can listen in right here on our homepage by clicking the LISTEN LIVE BUTTON. The show airs every week during the season on 99.9 FM & 1370 WFEA radio in the Manchester area or listen for FREE on the TuneIn Radio App.

 Our guests on Saturday will be Dave Keefe of Manchester Central and either Trevor Howard of Littleton or Jamie Walker of Woodsville, depending on who wins on Friday night.