AUGUSTA — The high school basketball tournament tips off in earnest Friday in Augusta, Bangor and Portland. Over the next two weeks, basketball players will get a chance to perform on the biggest stages of their high school athletic careers.
For more than 500 players on the 48 teams that will compete in the Augusta Civic Center, the stage literally will be bigger than ever. For the first time, the arena has installed a regulation college court for the tournament.
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The 94-foot court is 10 feet longer than the built-in court teams have played on for 40 years, which is 84 feet by 50 feet — the same dimensions as a regulation high school court. The Augusta Civic Center installed it this year at the request of the Maine Principals’ Association so that it would be consistent with the tournament’s three other host venues — the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor, the Portland Expo and Cross Insurance Arena in Portland — which use 94-by-50-foot courts.
While 5 feet on either side of the center court line may not seem like much, it can make a big difference depending on how well teams can adjust physically and mentally to the new dimensions.
“It honestly is huge compared to high school floors,” said Nokomis girls coach Michelle Paradis, whose team played at the Cross Insurance Center in Bangor last year but was eliminated in the preliminary round of this year’s tournament by Winslow.
“For the way that we play, you’ve got longer runs to traps. There’s more space for offensive players to go,” said Cony boys coach T.J. Maines, whose team plays Lewiston in an Eastern A quarterfinal at 8 p.m. Saturday. “I’ve heard some coaches say that because the floor is bigger, players exaggerate how far they’re throwing the ball, so maybe they’ll throw it away.”
The ACC floor isn’t new. It just hasn’t been used much recently.
ACC director Dana Colwill said the arena bought the court, which he estimated to be about 15 years old, to use when it hosted the North Atlantic Conference basketball tournament. The University of Maine women have played on it occasionally during that time, and the Maine Red Claws hosted exhibition games on it as recently as three years ago. But because assembling the floor was so labor-intensive for his small staff, the arena, with the MPA’s consent, opted to use the built-in high school floor for the tournament in previous years.
With the opening of the Cross Insurance Center in late 2013, the MPA decided it would be a good time to have all of the host venues conform on court sizes. Augusta’s bigger floor needed some minor refurbishing, so it was pushed back to this winter.
MPA executive director Dick Durost said consistency in court sizes means all of the teams that make it to the state championship now will be on a level playing surface.
“We wanted to make sure when a team from one region or other made it to states, both teams would be playing on a 94-foot court through the tournament, and there wouldn’t be one that went into a state championship having only played on an 84-foot court,” Durost said.
“I think it’s good in the sense that the Bangor and Portland floors were always college-regulation floors,” said Monmouth Academy girls coach Scott Wing, whose team plays Dirigo in the Western C quarterfinals on Tuesday. “If you’re going to be holding a tournament, you have to have it on a consistent floor.”
The Augusta Civic Center will host the Class A state championships Feb. 28.
Whether they are playing in Augusta, Bangor or Portland, players will have to adjust to the bigger court quickly, coaches said.
“You can see it. After the first four or five trips up and down the floor, they’re dead,” said Paradis, whose team played two games on the new Cross Insurance Center floor last year. “It’s not that they’re not in shape; it’s that they’re not used to running so far.”
Paradis said she had to use her bench earlier and more frequently, particularly in the early rounds of the tournament, until her players got used to the new dimensions.
“Their legs get tired quicker,” she said. “It’s better to have fresh legs running up and down the floor than have tired legs and having to use up time-outs to rest them.”
There’s no easy way to prepare players for the bigger court, either, Paradis said
“I would have to have them run from one cement block wall to the other cement block wall at the other end to duplicate that,” she said. “So what I’d do is have them scrimmage longer without a break.”
Maine Central Institute is one of the few high schools in the state with a college-sized court. Girls coach Wes Brann said it’s apparent when other teams aren’t used to playing on a larger floor, and, conversely, when his team isn’t comfortable playing on a smaller court.
“I noticed the difference in our prelim game (a 54-45 loss at Oceanside in Rockland),” Brann said. “The smaller court really makes the space a lot tighter, especially your offensive spacing.”
Waterville girls’ coach Rob Rodrigue said his team took advantage of being able to spread out a little more and held the ball throughout its 33-25 loss to Foxcroft in last year’s quarterfinals.
“(Slowing the game down) was our only chance to win. We thought the bigger floor gave us a bit of an advantage, just for the fact that it gave us more space,” Rodrigue said.
Teams that play up-tempo think they will be able to take advantage of the extra room in Augusta, too.
“I think it will help us out, because we like to run, too,” Wing said. “I think a longer court helps you in the running game. With our depth, I’ll take our chances with that.”
“We play fast all the time, and if you can dictate the way that you want to play, you can get (the opponent) tired a little more quickly,” Maines said.
In addition to a larger playing surface, players will have more room out of bounds on the baselines and sidelines. Spectators will notice when they walk to their seats that the space on either side of the court will be narrower and there will be less room to maneuver at either end, including near the concession stands.
After more than three years in storage, the ACC laid the floor out for the Capital City Hoops Classic on Dec. 26.
“It was a good dry run,” Colwill said. “You never know when you take it out of dry storage after a couple of years, because the panels can swell so they don’t fit together. But the court is in great shape.”
“It’s quite a monster,” he added. “It’s like a puzzle. You’ve got to get those first couple of pieces started in the right direction to get everything else to fall into place. But when it’s put together, it’s a beautiful court.”
To whoever is holding up the Gold Ball in 15 days, it will be the most beautiful court in the world.
Randy Whitehouse — 621-5638
rwhitehouse@mainetoday.com
Twitter: @RAWmaterial33
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