The Crosstown Motors Division IV Tournament Preview
2015-03-02
Eric Bontemps and Portsmouth Christian take on Newmarket
By Dave Haley Photo by Savannah Carberry
Our readers continue to show their appreciation for the work we do and we thank those people for their much needed support. Every $100 donation comes with access to every single full game video we cover in all four divisions but we don’t ask or expect every person who reads us (over 450 per day last week) to do that. Even a $20 donation goes a very long ways towards keeping our team together for years to come. Thank you again for those who have shown their support for our entire team’s work & effort.
For the past seven years we have previewed every single tournament game that has been played in all four divisions and today we begin with Division IV.
Sixteen teams tip off at seven o’clock Tuesday night vying for the right to be the last team standing on March 14th at Plymouth State University.
(16) Hinsdale at (1) Littleton
Trevor Howard’s team starts at the top again as it looks to make its fourth trip to the Final Four in five years. It’s been balanced scoring from day one for the Crusaders as Danny Brammer (11 ppg.), Kuba Kubkowski (11 ppg) and Logan Briggs (10 ppg) have all produced for a team whose lone defeat came to Woodsville at home back in January. A loss they avenged two weeks ago. The question for Littleton is who they are getting their points from in the half court when the game inevitably slows down in the tournament? Is Brammer going to be that guy? Is Kubkowski ready? Is Briggs capable yet as a sophomore?
All of that won’t come into play here. The Crusaders are likely going to overwhelm Hinsdale with their pressure and get a majority of their points in transition. Hinsdale has a very good sophomore center in 6’4 Kyle Rideout. The Racers will mix up their looks defensively but the key to hanging around Tuesday night is in their ability to take care of the basketball.
(9) Moultonborough Academy at (8) Woodsville
Two evenly matched teams in a rematch of a very good opening round game last season that Woodsville won.
Matt Swedberg’s team is going to bring three quarter court pressure to try and make an already small floor feel downright claustrophobic. Johnny McClay (10.8) is a heady point guard who has shown the ability to knock down three pointers late in the season. When shooting guard Tristan Price decided not to come out for the team in his senior year it took away the one player you had to account for 20 feet from the basket. That floor spacing is what is missing from the Panthers. Riley Swedberg (13.3 ppg.) loves to set up on the right block and use an up & under move to draw contact and finish in the paint.
Look for Michael Lloyd of Woodsville to draw the assignment on Swedberg. Woodsville has the size to keep Reese Swedberg and his older brother off the glass. Jamie Walker’s team knows where their strengths lie and they play to those strengths. This is a well-coached team. They’ll run plays to get Jaret Bemis (19.4 ppg) their all-state shooting guard open looks and hit the screener if Moultonborough over commits two players to Bemis. Their point guard Derek Maccini takes very good care of the ball and will knock down 15 footers if you sag too far into the paint.
Moultonborough is a lot like Groveton in that they are a decent half court team but they make their living off of your turnovers, brought on by their trapping and pressing. If Maccini and Dan Abrahamson take care of the ball and have the patience to find Bemis at least once on every possession they can advance to the quarterfinals for a second straight season. The 8/9 game is by its nature a toss-up game…expect nothing different here. This game will be up for grabs in the last three minutes.
(13) Profile at (4) Wilton-Lyndeborough
Can Paul Greenlaw’s Patriots hang around long enough to make things interesting against Wilton-Lyndeborough?
The staple of Greenlaw’s teams is how patient they are when they run their sets. Profile will run a set until it works and sometimes even back out and run a different set when they don’t get the look they want. Wilton is going to play man to man defense so they’ll have to talk on screens and switch out when Profile tries to shake Ian Baker (16 ppg.) loose.
The question is can Profile score enough points? Baker is the only player on the team averaging more than 7 points a game so where is that additional offense going to come from? On the flip side we all know about Jordan Litts (20 ppg.) but this is no longer Litts & a supporting cast. Ty Carrier (12.6) and brother Trey (12.5) have been nearly identical in both their scoring output and their contributions to a 14-4 season. They get easy baskets Litts creates but also draw the defense away from the all-state guard because of their ability.
Casey Lane has played better as the season goes along and he gives Ken Garnham’s team yet another player who can handle the ball. Profile is going to play a zone, maybe even a box & one on Litts, so Wilton will get a good look if they are patient enough in the half-court. In transition they have the speed to cause a lot of problems for the Patriots.
There is no doubt Greenlaw wants this to be a 46-42 kind of affair but can Profile take care of the ball well enough to make that pace work? Can they get scoring from anyone besides Baker to keep up with a team that averages 64 points a game?
(12) Nute at (5) Colebrook Academy
Scott Currier’s team is making a seven hour round trip to visit a 15 foot tall Mohawk Indian and a head coach one win away from tying Ed Cloe’s all-time mark for wins by a boys basketball coach in New Hampshire.
Nute can score and in Connor Bradway (18.8 ppg) they feature one of the best open court players in the division. Nute has to take care of the ball and get second shots against Colebrook to stay around long enough in this one to pull the upset. Mark Levesque (9.3ppg.) and Ryan Corriveau (8.9) have both produced for Nute and will have to do so again Tuesday night.
Colebrook will apply pressure and has really improved on their ability to take care of the basketball. That has everything to do with Sedrick McKinnon (16.7 ppg) directing traffic up top and Creed Cooney benefiting from his tournament experience as a senior.
You know what you are getting every night from those two, Richard Davis is the team’s most improved player and Mike Hastings gives you athleticism down low. The player who can change Colebrook’s fortune over the next two weeks is shooting guard Bryce Hicks (9.5). When Hicks is knocking down three pointers this becomes a very balanced unit, when he is struggling they become a lot more one dimensional and McKinnon has to carry the offense. If Colebrook has that third scoring weapon they will prove to be a very tough out.
(11) Sunapee at (6) Groveton
This is the most interesting match-up of the first round and one we seemed to see coming for weeks.
Groveton has an elite scorer in sophomore Corey Gadwah (19.6) so expect Ed Tenney’s Lakers to show him some extra attention Tuesday night. Groveton hasn’t gotten that second scoring option that most good teams have and that is where they tend to struggle. Mark Collins’ teams beat you by applying pressure and converting on your turnovers. When you have a team that struggles to score in the half-court that kind of defensive pressure can hide some of your deficiencies.
The reason why Sunapee is a bad match-up for Groveton is because no guard in Division IV takes better care of the ball than Matt Tenney (Rob Rizos of Derryfield is right there with him). Tenney (19 ppg) is a superior ball handler who keeps his head up and eyes down the floor. Teams like Lisbon, Gorham, Pittsburg and Lin-Wood are going to turn the ball over a ton against pressure. Sunapee will not. So Groveton has to score in the half court because they are not getting many easy baskets.
Where you attack Sunapee is down low. They struggle to stop you in the post and they cannot afford their best two players to get in any sort of foul trouble because when either Tenney or Issaiah Chappell (29 ppg) is on the bench it becomes the 5 on 1 defense head coach Bobby Finstock’s team used to face in ‘Teen Wolf’.
Which brings us to Chappell, how will Groveton slow him down? They won’t..he’s getting his points. What you need to do is force the issue in the paint and wear Sunapee down from the inside/out. Let anyone but Tenney or Chappell shoot when they’re open and protect the paint, limit the Lakers to one look a possession.
Groveton is going to have to score to win this game and their best bet is doing that in the paint. All of which makes this the game to watch next Tuesday night.
(14) Pittsburg-Canaan at (3) Epping
The champs open up their title defense against the same team they eliminated in the first round a year ago. Epping has played a very tough schedule and earned some very good wins (let’s not forget they swept Division III tournament team Raymond) but they hardly come into the post-season firing on all cylinders.
Sean Young is getting production from his two big guns Brett Couture (18.6 ppg) and My Man Colby Wilson (16.2) but what they need is Dylan Derosier (11 ppg) to return to the form he showed back in January. Teams are now going to game plan for Wilson and Couture and that is when that third option is essential. I had one rival coach tell me he thought Derosier was their best player in mid-January. That may have been true then but it hasn’t been the case of late.
Derosier has shown an ability to step up in big moments (he was terrific in last years’ quarterfinals against Profile) so he’s certainly capable of doing that again. Tommy Bullock will be called upon by Young to apply heavy ball pressure, something that will affect a Pittsburg team that struggles with turnovers, while Jackson Rivers can provide rebounding.
Pittsburg-Canaan has good size down low. That ability to control the paint won them a lot of games up north. Epping has just as much size between Couture and Rivers so this is a match-up that favors the Blue Devils.
Epping has shown flashes of championship form this season, and if they are getting back to the final Saturday of the season they’ll need to play their most consistent basketball of the season over the next two weeks.
(10) Newmarket at (7) Portsmouth Christian
Two weeks ago Portsmouth Christian was fighting for the 2 seed in the Division IV tournament but when the dust settled the Eagles landed at #7.
They ended up there because they could not defeat their greatest adversary this season: February vacation…
PCA was the only team in the state that had three of their top 6 go on vacation…literally…at the most crucial point of the regular season. Key performers Wes Tobin (9 ppg.), Jake Holden (6.3 ppg) and Paul Staude (12.2 nursing a shoulder injury but also away on vacation) all missed games against Derryfield, Newmarket and Epping. This left all-state forward Eric Bontemps (13.6), Caleb Gendron (7 ppg) and point guard Shaun Bradley alone out on an island (vacation pun intended..) without three of their teams top six players. All of which made The Big Smooth Lewis Atkins’, who has done a terrific job with this team, life a whole lot more difficult over the past two weeks.
In their absences Drew McCormack stepped up in a big way, averaging 14 ppg over the vacation stretch. His new found confidence gives this team a dependable contributor as they get into the one & down phase of the season.
Jamie Hayes’ Mules team won four of their last six games to climb to the ten spot and now face a team they beat last week. Newmarket was able to do more on both ends of the floor when 6’4 center Ian Bentley (12.9 ppg.) returned from a head injury suffered last summer. Vinnie Khounxay (8.7), Cam Jordan (7.0) & Alex Souvannaseng (7.8) have all contributed to a solid backcourt. Newmarket knows their neighbors over in Dover pretty well, this is a game about execution and not coaching tricks.
Newmarket has played better by the week and has given themselves a real chance to pull a first round upset. PCA on the other hand has had to deal with a lot of the tension caused by the three key players leaving their teammates for a week during a huge three game stretch. If those issues are resolved they have all the pieces to make a run to Plymouth State, the question is whether they have put it all behind them.
We will have full coverage of this match-up in our first of twenty tournament games over the next three weeks. Justin McIsaac and The Great Jon Kesty will bring you all the highlights and post-game interviews Tuesday night.
(15) Lin-Wood at (2) Derryfield School
Another rematch of a first round game that took place in this same very round a year ago. That one was never competitive and if Lin-Wood is going to change that scenario this season they’ll need big nights out of both Devon Rivera and Wayne Child.
Derryfield gets all-state play out of their point guard Rob Rizos and has done a very good job showing patience in their half-court offense. Sam Anderson (14.2) will prove to be one of several tough match-ups for a Lin-Wood team that eight of their last nine games including a season ending loss to 2-16 Gorham.
For the past seven years we have previewed every single tournament game that has been played in all four divisions and today we begin with Division IV.
Sixteen teams tip off at seven o’clock Tuesday night vying for the right to be the last team standing on March 14th at Plymouth State University.
(16) Hinsdale at (1) Littleton
Trevor Howard’s team starts at the top again as it looks to make its fourth trip to the Final Four in five years. It’s been balanced scoring from day one for the Crusaders as Danny Brammer (11 ppg.), Kuba Kubkowski (11 ppg) and Logan Briggs (10 ppg) have all produced for a team whose lone defeat came to Woodsville at home back in January. A loss they avenged two weeks ago. The question for Littleton is who they are getting their points from in the half court when the game inevitably slows down in the tournament? Is Brammer going to be that guy? Is Kubkowski ready? Is Briggs capable yet as a sophomore?
All of that won’t come into play here. The Crusaders are likely going to overwhelm Hinsdale with their pressure and get a majority of their points in transition. Hinsdale has a very good sophomore center in 6’4 Kyle Rideout. The Racers will mix up their looks defensively but the key to hanging around Tuesday night is in their ability to take care of the basketball.
(9) Moultonborough Academy at (8) Woodsville
Two evenly matched teams in a rematch of a very good opening round game last season that Woodsville won.
Matt Swedberg’s team is going to bring three quarter court pressure to try and make an already small floor feel downright claustrophobic. Johnny McClay (10.8) is a heady point guard who has shown the ability to knock down three pointers late in the season. When shooting guard Tristan Price decided not to come out for the team in his senior year it took away the one player you had to account for 20 feet from the basket. That floor spacing is what is missing from the Panthers. Riley Swedberg (13.3 ppg.) loves to set up on the right block and use an up & under move to draw contact and finish in the paint.
Look for Michael Lloyd of Woodsville to draw the assignment on Swedberg. Woodsville has the size to keep Reese Swedberg and his older brother off the glass. Jamie Walker’s team knows where their strengths lie and they play to those strengths. This is a well-coached team. They’ll run plays to get Jaret Bemis (19.4 ppg) their all-state shooting guard open looks and hit the screener if Moultonborough over commits two players to Bemis. Their point guard Derek Maccini takes very good care of the ball and will knock down 15 footers if you sag too far into the paint.
Moultonborough is a lot like Groveton in that they are a decent half court team but they make their living off of your turnovers, brought on by their trapping and pressing. If Maccini and Dan Abrahamson take care of the ball and have the patience to find Bemis at least once on every possession they can advance to the quarterfinals for a second straight season. The 8/9 game is by its nature a toss-up game…expect nothing different here. This game will be up for grabs in the last three minutes.
(13) Profile at (4) Wilton-Lyndeborough
Can Paul Greenlaw’s Patriots hang around long enough to make things interesting against Wilton-Lyndeborough?
The staple of Greenlaw’s teams is how patient they are when they run their sets. Profile will run a set until it works and sometimes even back out and run a different set when they don’t get the look they want. Wilton is going to play man to man defense so they’ll have to talk on screens and switch out when Profile tries to shake Ian Baker (16 ppg.) loose.
The question is can Profile score enough points? Baker is the only player on the team averaging more than 7 points a game so where is that additional offense going to come from? On the flip side we all know about Jordan Litts (20 ppg.) but this is no longer Litts & a supporting cast. Ty Carrier (12.6) and brother Trey (12.5) have been nearly identical in both their scoring output and their contributions to a 14-4 season. They get easy baskets Litts creates but also draw the defense away from the all-state guard because of their ability.
Casey Lane has played better as the season goes along and he gives Ken Garnham’s team yet another player who can handle the ball. Profile is going to play a zone, maybe even a box & one on Litts, so Wilton will get a good look if they are patient enough in the half-court. In transition they have the speed to cause a lot of problems for the Patriots.
There is no doubt Greenlaw wants this to be a 46-42 kind of affair but can Profile take care of the ball well enough to make that pace work? Can they get scoring from anyone besides Baker to keep up with a team that averages 64 points a game?
(12) Nute at (5) Colebrook Academy
Scott Currier’s team is making a seven hour round trip to visit a 15 foot tall Mohawk Indian and a head coach one win away from tying Ed Cloe’s all-time mark for wins by a boys basketball coach in New Hampshire.
Nute can score and in Connor Bradway (18.8 ppg) they feature one of the best open court players in the division. Nute has to take care of the ball and get second shots against Colebrook to stay around long enough in this one to pull the upset. Mark Levesque (9.3ppg.) and Ryan Corriveau (8.9) have both produced for Nute and will have to do so again Tuesday night.
Colebrook will apply pressure and has really improved on their ability to take care of the basketball. That has everything to do with Sedrick McKinnon (16.7 ppg) directing traffic up top and Creed Cooney benefiting from his tournament experience as a senior.
You know what you are getting every night from those two, Richard Davis is the team’s most improved player and Mike Hastings gives you athleticism down low. The player who can change Colebrook’s fortune over the next two weeks is shooting guard Bryce Hicks (9.5). When Hicks is knocking down three pointers this becomes a very balanced unit, when he is struggling they become a lot more one dimensional and McKinnon has to carry the offense. If Colebrook has that third scoring weapon they will prove to be a very tough out.
(11) Sunapee at (6) Groveton
This is the most interesting match-up of the first round and one we seemed to see coming for weeks.
Groveton has an elite scorer in sophomore Corey Gadwah (19.6) so expect Ed Tenney’s Lakers to show him some extra attention Tuesday night. Groveton hasn’t gotten that second scoring option that most good teams have and that is where they tend to struggle. Mark Collins’ teams beat you by applying pressure and converting on your turnovers. When you have a team that struggles to score in the half-court that kind of defensive pressure can hide some of your deficiencies.
The reason why Sunapee is a bad match-up for Groveton is because no guard in Division IV takes better care of the ball than Matt Tenney (Rob Rizos of Derryfield is right there with him). Tenney (19 ppg) is a superior ball handler who keeps his head up and eyes down the floor. Teams like Lisbon, Gorham, Pittsburg and Lin-Wood are going to turn the ball over a ton against pressure. Sunapee will not. So Groveton has to score in the half court because they are not getting many easy baskets.
Where you attack Sunapee is down low. They struggle to stop you in the post and they cannot afford their best two players to get in any sort of foul trouble because when either Tenney or Issaiah Chappell (29 ppg) is on the bench it becomes the 5 on 1 defense head coach Bobby Finstock’s team used to face in ‘Teen Wolf’.
Which brings us to Chappell, how will Groveton slow him down? They won’t..he’s getting his points. What you need to do is force the issue in the paint and wear Sunapee down from the inside/out. Let anyone but Tenney or Chappell shoot when they’re open and protect the paint, limit the Lakers to one look a possession.
Groveton is going to have to score to win this game and their best bet is doing that in the paint. All of which makes this the game to watch next Tuesday night.
(14) Pittsburg-Canaan at (3) Epping
The champs open up their title defense against the same team they eliminated in the first round a year ago. Epping has played a very tough schedule and earned some very good wins (let’s not forget they swept Division III tournament team Raymond) but they hardly come into the post-season firing on all cylinders.
Sean Young is getting production from his two big guns Brett Couture (18.6 ppg) and My Man Colby Wilson (16.2) but what they need is Dylan Derosier (11 ppg) to return to the form he showed back in January. Teams are now going to game plan for Wilson and Couture and that is when that third option is essential. I had one rival coach tell me he thought Derosier was their best player in mid-January. That may have been true then but it hasn’t been the case of late.
Derosier has shown an ability to step up in big moments (he was terrific in last years’ quarterfinals against Profile) so he’s certainly capable of doing that again. Tommy Bullock will be called upon by Young to apply heavy ball pressure, something that will affect a Pittsburg team that struggles with turnovers, while Jackson Rivers can provide rebounding.
Pittsburg-Canaan has good size down low. That ability to control the paint won them a lot of games up north. Epping has just as much size between Couture and Rivers so this is a match-up that favors the Blue Devils.
Epping has shown flashes of championship form this season, and if they are getting back to the final Saturday of the season they’ll need to play their most consistent basketball of the season over the next two weeks.
(10) Newmarket at (7) Portsmouth Christian
Two weeks ago Portsmouth Christian was fighting for the 2 seed in the Division IV tournament but when the dust settled the Eagles landed at #7.
They ended up there because they could not defeat their greatest adversary this season: February vacation…
PCA was the only team in the state that had three of their top 6 go on vacation…literally…at the most crucial point of the regular season. Key performers Wes Tobin (9 ppg.), Jake Holden (6.3 ppg) and Paul Staude (12.2 nursing a shoulder injury but also away on vacation) all missed games against Derryfield, Newmarket and Epping. This left all-state forward Eric Bontemps (13.6), Caleb Gendron (7 ppg) and point guard Shaun Bradley alone out on an island (vacation pun intended..) without three of their teams top six players. All of which made The Big Smooth Lewis Atkins’, who has done a terrific job with this team, life a whole lot more difficult over the past two weeks.
In their absences Drew McCormack stepped up in a big way, averaging 14 ppg over the vacation stretch. His new found confidence gives this team a dependable contributor as they get into the one & down phase of the season.
Jamie Hayes’ Mules team won four of their last six games to climb to the ten spot and now face a team they beat last week. Newmarket was able to do more on both ends of the floor when 6’4 center Ian Bentley (12.9 ppg.) returned from a head injury suffered last summer. Vinnie Khounxay (8.7), Cam Jordan (7.0) & Alex Souvannaseng (7.8) have all contributed to a solid backcourt. Newmarket knows their neighbors over in Dover pretty well, this is a game about execution and not coaching tricks.
Newmarket has played better by the week and has given themselves a real chance to pull a first round upset. PCA on the other hand has had to deal with a lot of the tension caused by the three key players leaving their teammates for a week during a huge three game stretch. If those issues are resolved they have all the pieces to make a run to Plymouth State, the question is whether they have put it all behind them.
We will have full coverage of this match-up in our first of twenty tournament games over the next three weeks. Justin McIsaac and The Great Jon Kesty will bring you all the highlights and post-game interviews Tuesday night.
(15) Lin-Wood at (2) Derryfield School
Another rematch of a first round game that took place in this same very round a year ago. That one was never competitive and if Lin-Wood is going to change that scenario this season they’ll need big nights out of both Devon Rivera and Wayne Child.
Derryfield gets all-state play out of their point guard Rob Rizos and has done a very good job showing patience in their half-court offense. Sam Anderson (14.2) will prove to be one of several tough match-ups for a Lin-Wood team that eight of their last nine games including a season ending loss to 2-16 Gorham.