Dec. 18th results

I guess this season is "what we all thought it would be."

Central takes Dover to OT before losing 64 - 61. Dover hits a shot at the buzzer in regulation to send it into OT and that's where it really gets wild and wooly. I might need clarification, but from what I heard Central picked up 2 technicals in OT which sealed their fate.....Wow!

BG wins a nail biter over Exeter. Merrimack has a solid 16 point victory over West.

In the marquee matchup it was Trinity 62 Memorial 55

1 2 3 4
Mem 8 19 14 14
THS 22 16 18 6

Trinity started the game hot and clicking on all cylinders. David Madol tried to win the POY just in the first 8 minutes. He had 10 points, including a new 3 pointer and an old fashioned one. He also had a couple of blocks and a few rebounds to go with his juicy first quarter stat line. Stevens hit two 3's. Duffley had 2 baskets to give Trinity their quick start. Morgan and couture each had 4 to lead the Crusaders. Memorial's offense found it's footing in the 2nd period as Fitz and Morgan each had 6 points. Trinity received a hoop from Lafond and a 3 from Descoteaux as they maintained a double digit lead in the second and took a 38 - 27 lead into halftime. Madol had 8 points in the 3rd period as he really established himself on the blocks. Memorial started driving and taking the ball down low more in the 3rd period as they attempted more FTs in this period than they did in the first half. Memorial clamped down defensively as they held Trinity to 6 fourth quarter points. Fitz continued to heat up as he hit 2 three's to bring Memorial within close range. Memorial did cut Trinity's lead to 3 - 4 points on a couple of occaisions only to see Madol hit a couple of key buckets down low. There was an interesting 3 point attempt by Couture with about a minute to go where there seemed to be "contact above and beyond" normal contact and a whistle wasn't blown.

Memorial - Fitz 18, Couture 14, Morgan 13, Edhem 3, Marchawicz 5, Martinez 2 and Desire 1.
Trinity - MADOL 26, Duffley 12, Stevens 11 Hayden 5, Aluko 3, Descoteaux 3 and Lafond 2.

There was great atmosphere at Trinity tonight. More than one person said that the atmosphere was closer to March than it was to December. Cormac did a fine job of shouldering an emotional night and producing a fine game. Matt Couture played solid throughout the whole game. Morgan was impressive with his overall strong game. Madol looked really good tonight. His outside game is as impressive as his inside game. Stevens hit three 3's. Gordon Duffley was strong with the ball and off the ball by puttting back a couple of rebounded shots. He will be a versatile player for the Pioneers. Trinity crowd chanted, "Where is Cormac?" Memorial crowd chanted back, "We have Cormac."

Memorial will get better after tonight. Trinity was scary in the first 3 quarters. It was nice to finally see HS basketball after a LLLLLOOONNNNGGGG off season.

Here's a detailed account from Fosters Daily on what transpired in the wild OT of the Dover - Central game:

In overtime, the game was tied 57-57 when Central's Sean MacDonald was called for a foul, then was immediately slapped with a technical foul, apparently for something said to an official. Moments later, another technical was assessed, this time to the Little Green bench. That gave Dover — which hadn't been to the line all night before that — six consecutive free throws.

The Green Wave missed a chance to put big distance between them and the Little Green when they connected on just three of the six freebies. Duffy went to the line for the regular foul shots and hit the first but missed the second. Burt took the technicals, threw up an air ball on the first, then hit two of the remaining three. Dover led 60-57.

"The game was definitely what everybody expected," Burt said. "Coach told us the game was going to be intense, that they were going to get up on us the whole time. I probably shot the ball the worst I ever have, but other people stepped up. (The) player I was most impressed with was Rory Duffy."

Central came back to tie it at 60-60 when Stephen Ferge went coast-to-coast on a layup with 1:35 to play. It remained that way until Al-Darraji cut through the lane for a layup to put Dover up two with 46.1 seconds to go. Wickey went to the line about 12 seconds later and hit one of two, then Al-Darraji was sent to the line, where he hit both ends of a one-and-one to put Dover up 64-61 with 23.2 seconds remaining. Central missed on its final possession, and Dover got its first win of the season.

"Dover played great," Central coach Dave "Doc" Wheeler said. "We have great respect for them. We knew they'd be one of the best teams in the state. Mike does a great job with them. I'm pleased with how we played."

Dover, 64-61 (OT)

Man. Central (0-1) 18 10 7 20 6 — 61

Dover (1-0) 9 14 17 15 9 — 64

CENTRAL (61) — Ferge 3-0-7, MacDonald 1-1-3, Brown 6-5-18, Melendez 1-0-3, LaCount 4-7-15, Wickey 6-3-15. Totals: 21-16-61.

DOVER (64) — Al-Darraji 8-2-21, Burt 7-2-16, Tavares 1-0-2, Faustino 3-0-6, Duffy 7-1-19. Totals: 26-5-64.

3-pointers: C-3 (Ferge, Brown, Melendez); D-7 (Duffy 4, Al-Darraji 3)

As always, there was some interesting information in box scores from 12/18:

- Sean Moyen had 10 points in the GTown game. A healthy Sean Moyen scoring makes Alvrine a better team.

- The Big 3 at BG, Green, St. Lawrence and McClung combined for 48 points against Exeter. That's 80% of their total of 59 points. It still took a buzzer beater by McClung to pull out the victory.

- Dunn, Gould and Cronan combined for 40 of Winny's 56 points in their 8 point victory over South. I'm sure more points from Knowles would be welcome for the Winny Warriors.

- Joe Gallant had 21 points in Salem's 59 - 56 loss to North. He could have a quietly big year. Pratt had 18 points for North. He could have a nice under the radar year also.

- Zack Mathieu had 17 points in Pinkerton's 59 - 35 victory over Concord. Now, I'm sure he scored more points than blocked shots in this game, but if any Pinky fans could send in a blocked shot report on Mathieu on some nights, that would be cool.

- When you see scores like: Campbell 83 Newport Middle 23, Prospect Mtn. 63 Raymond 21, Somersworth 54 Sanborn 19 and Littleton 80 Lin-Wood 26 you wonder why there isn't a 5th division in basketball in NH. There's so many more HS basketball teams in NH than football teams, yet football has 6 divisions and basketball has the 4 divisions. Every night in girls and boys basketball there's about 3 to 6 games with 40 to 60 point margins. The top one so far is Fall Mt. laying the lumber to Masenic in a girl's Class M game last week 90 - 10.

Nice reports...I didn't make it out unfortunately but heard some good things from the Alvirne game, Caleb Donnelly had 21-23 pts with 3 or 4 threes. He's lights out. Moyen definitely brings another dimension to that team now that he's successfully back from surgery. But he's been out for about a year, once he gets the 'feel' for the game back they could really be dangerous down the stretch

Goffstown hung with the Broncos much of the game and while they probably won't win a ton of games this year, they had a decent game from I was told.

If you watch winny this year, you will see that knowles is playing the 3 or 4, and has to help out on the boards. not like the last few years when he could roam on the outside.