There were no bouncing basketballs, no shrill whistles being blown, no cheering fans.

The sounds of silence echoed inside the cavernous Bangor Auditorium on Thursday, the day the Eastern Maine basketball tournament was postponed.

A forecast of snow and freezing rain coupled with the long driving distances of the teams involved led to the tournament committee’s decision to postpone Thursday’s Class C semifinals.

“I think the feeling was, given the distance the teams had to travel to get here and the fact the conditions were not going to get any better, we decided it was safer to postpone,” said tournament director Bill Fletcher.

“If you err on the side of caution, you won’t get into any trouble,” Fletcher added, “but if you had a bus go off the road with kids on it, it’s just not worth it.”

The schedule has been rearranged to include eight games on Friday and six regional championships contests on Saturday. Classes C and D semifinals will be held on Friday in two sessions, beginning at 8:35 a.m.

Schenck High School of East Millinocket, which has two teams still playing in the tournament, is the Class C semifinal participant closest to Bangor.

The Western Maine tournament continued play on Thursday, after a one-hour delay.

According to the National Weather Service, two inches of snow had fallen in Bangor and Calais as of 1 p.m., but it was mixed with freezing rain.

Aroostook County, which was sending Limestone and Hodgdon to the tournament Thursday, was receiving all snow and had six to 10 inches on the ground, according to the NWS report.

“I think it was a good decision,” said Schenck girls coach Jay Brown. “We’ve got both teams still in it and that’s a lot of people traveling down there. The freezing rain has made it really unsafe.”

The biggest problem for the Class C schools is the fact the winners will have less than 24 hours to prepare for one another, Brown said.

For high school basketball aficionados, Friday and Saturday becomes two days in hoop paradise.

After Friday’s eight games of Class C and D semifinals, Saturday is a day full of championships.

“Friday will be a long day, but, hell, we do it in Class A,” Fletcher said. “This gives a chance for the B-C-D committee to see what it’s like. And Saturday, we’ve got three finals instead of two. It’ll be a championship day.”

Fletcher, who has been involved in the tournament as a player, coach or fan since the late 1940s, cannot remember the tournament being postponed during the vacation week.

“We’ve always been blessed with pretty good weather,” said Fletcher, who is in his third year as director. “Normally, you don’t even have to consider postponing.”

Last year’s state Class A championship between Bangor and South Portland was postponed by a blizzard while opening night of the 1988 tournament was delayed for one day.

Financially, the postponement should not affect the Maine Principals’ Assocation, which rents the Auditorium on a game-by-game basis, Fletcher said. Bumping games to Friday, in which they will run two sessions, might off-set smaller crowds which would have shown up on Saturday, he added.

“You might lose a little bit, but you really would have taken a bath on Thursday,” Fletcher said.