Losses helped MDI, Calais garner titles

For the Mount Desert Island and Calais girls basketball teams, a loss each in the regular season helped turn things around for both squads.

Not that things were going all wrong for the Class B Trojans and Class C Blue Devils at the time of their losses. And neither loss hurt much in the standings.

But for MDI coach Burt Barker, who saw his Trojans finally play well in a loss at the hands of Class A Bangor, and Bob McShane of Calais, whose team learned a few lessons against Mattanawcook of Lincoln, the negatives came with positives.

And both teams are playing for state championships this week (Calais will play Dirigo of Dixfield for the Class C crown at 7:40 p.m. Friday at the Bangor Auditorium; MDI will face Gray-New Gloucester at 7:05 p.m. Saturday at the Augusta Civic Center)

“I’m telling you, if we hadn’t lost that game in Lincoln we wouldn’t be here right now,” McShane said after the Blue Devils won the Eastern Maine Class C title Saturday night.

Calais was undefeated and had won seven games in a row before running into the taller Lynx in a Jan. 8 game. Five-foot-10 MA senior Desirae Haines scored 22 points in that game.

McShane saw that the Blue Devils’ matchup defense wasn’t working with this year’s team, whose tallest players are 5-foot-7, and in the next few practices, had the girls work on a 2-3 zone defense.

Calais still runs its full-court press and hurts teams by forcing turnovers, but now has a way to pack in the middle.

“We went with a basic 2-3 and tried to front the low post and trap the ball in the corners and belly up on the guards a little bit,” McShane said. “It’s been less effective than our matchup but with this group it worked better.”

The zone worked well in the tournament, where the Blue Devils defeated three teams – Stearns of Millinocket, Searsport, and the Lynx – that had taller players in the starting lineup and on the bench.

The players said they were a little surprised at the move to a zone, given Calais’ tradition of man defense, but the team has made a smooth transition.

“The press works a lot better on the zone anyway, I think,” said junior guard Nanci Feck. “We adjusted to it really [well].”

McShane said he has taken some ribbing from those who know his propensity for man-to-man defense, but he was willing to put aside his own preferences .

“[Stearns coach Jerry Burleigh] … was giving me a hard time last [Friday] night about going with the zone, but you’ve got to go with what gives your kids the best chance of winning,” he said.

Barker and the Mount Desert Island girls had already lost a December home game to Bangor when the teams met for the rematch at Red Barry Gym Jan. 31.

MDI had been struggling with ankle injuries to star center Melissa Gott and Barker’s daughter, 6-foot-1 point guard Bracey Barker. And the team, he felt, wasn’t playing anywhere near its potential.

Then came the Bangor game, before which MDI was 12-1. The Rams won 58-51, but the Trojans had cut the lead to 44-41 at the end of the third quarter.

“We played real well and [Bangor] played real well,” Burt Barker said. “From that point on it coincided with us getting healthier. I don’t think we had, in my mind, a weak game, a poor game in our last eight games.”

Barker made some technical changes as well, consolidating the main lineup down from nine players to six or seven. He worked with the team to improve its half-court trap.

“I put Bracey down low in the zone because we weren’t getting enough defensive rebounding,” he said. “I put Shelley [Gott] on the ball in the half-court trap where she’s much more active.”

The team has also benefited from a well-balanced offense that developed later in the season and came to fruition at the tournament. Melissa Gott was named the Class B tourney MVP, but Bracey Barker’s fourth-quarter effort in the quarterfinal and Shelley Gott’s first-half 3-pointers in the regional final were key sparks in MDI’s title drive.

Shelley Gott, Melissa Gott’s sister, said some team meetings helped turn things around as well.

“Mr. Barker gave us a talk and he’s like, ‘It’s up to you guys. I’ll do whatever you want to do but you have to work together if you want this,'” she said. “The captains talked to us and said ‘I don’t know about you, but we want this. Let’s work together as a team and go for it.'”