AUGUSTA – The Gorham boys’ basketball team is about to sell its second home and move south.
Perennial winter residents for two decades of Februarys at Augusta Civic Center, the Rams will bid farewell to the Western Class B tournament after tonight.
Gorham gets a chance to throw its own going-away party. The second-seeded Rams will try to wrap up their fifth regional title in the last six years against No. 1 Falmouth at 8:45 p.m.
Next year, due to ever-increasing enrollment, Gorham ascends to Class A and moves from the Western Maine Conference to the Southern Maine Activities Association.
Actually, this is Falmouth’s last regional tourney at the ACC for the foreseeable future, too. The Western Class B bracket moves to Portland next year, replaced by the Eastern Class A playoffs during this traditional week of wall-to-wall hoop.
“We have a lot of great memories,” said Gorham coach Kevin Jenkins. “We’ve been to the tournament each of my 21 years. A couple of those years, we were young and we lost in a preliminary game, but we’ve usually made it to Augusta.”
This season marked Gorham’s 17th advance to the semifinals in Jenkins’ tenure. They’ve won the regional seven times, the state championship twice.
To put the exclamation point on that historic run, Gorham will have to avenge the only team that beat the Rams during the season. In fact, the Yachtsmen pulled off a home-and-home sweep.
Both teams are 18-2. Both teams are tall and athletic, and both flaunt a top-shelf candidate for tournament MVP.
Ben Thayer scored his 1,000th career point in the quarterfinals against Poland and has averaged more than 20 points per game in two one-sided wins.
For Falmouth, junior Bryant Barr exploded for 28 points in a 56-54 overtime semifinal victory over Wells.
Thayer and John MacKenzie must continue to pound the boards to counter Falmouth’s slight size advantage. Junior guards Matt Trask, Jeff Manchester and Max Bass might give the Rams a similar edge in quickness.
Bass is a three-year starter at the point.
Jayson Loranger and Jon Forcella join Barr as perimeter threats, while 6-foot-5 senior triplets Troy Frost, Ben Rayder and Eliav Bitan hope to create as many high percentage shots as the Yachtsmen enjoyed against Wells.
In one stretch of that win, Falmouth hit 12 consecutive field goals.
Gorham will miss Falmouth, Greely, Cape Elizabeth and other familiar postseason rivals.
“But we gain Westbrook, Windham and Bonny Eagle, all right next door,” Jenkins said. “We’ll travel less.”
Both teams will leave behind a few ghosts at the mecca. Falmouth seeks its first Western B title, but the Yachtsmen won seven Class C crowns in a 14-year stretch before moving up earlier this decade.
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