AUGUSTA — Can’t remember if it was Mom or one of my Facebook flooder friends who preached, “To be content with what you have, stop worrying about you don’t have.”

Not sure if that axiom is a contradiction, an absurdity or just plain lame. But it does echo the mixed feelings I have about the high school basketball tournament that commenced here and 70 miles north and south on the interstate Friday night.

At one end of the floor, we have — and I harbor no stake in this other than getting you to read our live, up-to-the-second, play-by-play blogs at sunjournal.com — arguably the most wide-open statewide tournament I can remember.

We are blessed with top seeds that are 15-3 and bottom feeders that are 13-5 or 12-6. Not even the 19-0 giants have the usual monolithic quality that would inspire you to hand them the Gold Ball now and save everyone the trouble.

That’s what we have. But it’s at least partially, if not primarily, due to what we don’t have.

‘Tis the season of fallen stars.

And to think we thought H1N1 was the epidemic that would endanger the quality of our winter scholastic sports season. Instead, the chief pollutants in the atmosphere are the radiation emissions from the x-ray and MRI machines.

Stress fractures, turf toe, knee and groin injuries have forced too many of the best boys’ and girls’ basketball players in the state to exchange their sneakers for crutches, pneumatic boots and casts and clipboards.

One such malady came home to roost Friday afternoon, while our hands still had that new-program smell and before most spectators could escape work without faking their own injuries.

With 1,000-point scorer and Bowdoin College-bound point guard Kirsten Prue confined to the dreaded dual role of student assistant coach and cheerleader, the second-seeded Edward Little girls completed their late-season swoon with a 48-35 loss to Hampden Academy.

No offense to victorious Hampden or a gritty EL supporting cast, but there’s no way in Winterport that would have happened with even an 80-percent Prue patched up and quarterbacking the Eddies’ offense. EL won the lone regular-season clash going away.

Prue was more than a double-digit scorer nearly every night for four winters, double and triple-teams be damned. She was the drumbeat; the soul and spirit of a team that was one possession away from a regional final last season.

Minus Prue, out with a foot injury, EL’s offensive options decreased from limitless to: a) Shoot threes and pray; or b) Drive to the hoop and get fouled.

Good players, talented teammates, lacked their true north. The trepidation to shoot was thick as the wafting smell of hot dogs from the north end of the arena.

Timing is everything. Let’s not forget that the EL boys, who play their quarterfinal at 5:30 p.m. today against Mt. Blue, lost their national McDonald’s All-Star nominee to an injury in Game 1.

James Philbrook’s troublesome toe was only a blessing in disguise because it cropped up in December, giving explosive guard Yusuf Iman and relative varsity newcomers Bo Leary, Brandon Giguere and Cody Nicholas the chance to evolve and grow together. By the time the Eddies got to open their holiday gift with Philbrook’s Christmas-week return, EL owned all the ingredients of another Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference champion and state title contender.

Fate intervened in the same graceful fashion for the Oxford Hills ladies, who never got a chance to grow as a quintet around the inactive Megan Joyce. The Vikings limped out of the gate at 4-6 before storming through the blue-skied late January and early February with eight consecutive victories.

Scary an eighth seed as there’s ever been, Oxford Hills pushed undefeated No. 1 Skowhegan for a spell late Friday night before seeing its season end.

Uncertainty has reigned since preseason exhibitions in Western Class A, where three of the premier boys’ players in the state have been in-and-mostly-out of the lineup.

Dominic Borelli of Westbrook is hobbled by a balky knee. Keegan Hyland of South Portland has wrestled with a lower-body injury that permitted him to play but one regular-season game. (Happily for the Red Riots, the last one.)

Add the travails of Cheverus’ Indiana Faithful, sidelined and then granted an 11th-hour reprieve after his eight semesters of athletic eligibility elapsed, and you have an entire bracket thrown into a tizzy before the names of schools were matched with limbs on the tree.

As for the questions of if any of them will play, how long they’ll play and what brand of chemistry they’ll share with their battle-tested teammates, well, that’s why they pay those coaches the big bucks.

Insert hearty and/or nervous laugh here.

What we don’t have, or can’t count on headed into this year’s tournament, has multiplied the unknown tenfold. That’s great for fans, reporters and people who genuinely love this time of year, entering it with equal parts passion and dispassionate restraint.

For players, parents and those who bleed their school’s colors, it has exponentially increased the bitterness of those tears and the echo of those what-ifs.

Mom always had reassuring words for that sort of situation, too. Not sure they would have eased any of Edward Little’s pain Friday, though.

Kalle Oakes is a staff columnist. His e-mail is [email protected].