The Big East basketball conference’s experiment of Class A teams playing each other for a third time in a season and playing the games at the Bangor Auditorium may not last past this season.

Big East director Paul Soucy said attendance at the games has been so low that the conference is losing money hosting the games.

Class struggle

Soucy said the decision for the Class A teams to play each other for a third time came out of a desire by the majority of the Big East A schools to not play Class B teams.

“We had some lopsided scores,” Soucy said. “Particularly when A’s played the B’s. Occasionally a ‘B’ school would beat an ‘A.’ But by and large, ‘A’ dominated.”

Out of this grew a plan for “A” teams to play each other for a third time. The conference also decided to rent the Bangor Auditorium for those games. The games have been played as parts of double- and tripleheaders.

The Big East Class A schools are Bangor, Brewer, Hampden Academy, John Bapst of Bangor, Nokomis of Newport, Old Town, and Presque Isle.

Of those schools, Old Town and Presque Isle decided to fill their schedules with Class B schools rather than play teams for a third time. Presque Isle will become a Class B school in all sports in the next school year, which will create even more scheduling problems for Big East officials.

The reaction among the coaches has been mixed. Hampden Academy’s Andy Frace is not a fan of playing a team for a third time.

“You can get into a situation where you play a team three times. If you get in the Big East [championship] game, that’s four times. And if you see them again in the tournament, that’s five times,” Frace said.

Bangor’s Roger Reed sees a benefit in playing strictly a Class A schedule.

The Bangor coach said he had concerns over running up the score while getting his starters enough work in games against “B” teams.

“I’d rather play somebody three times and have to fight hard throughout the entire game than to play a game that’s over in the first period,” Reed said.

Brewer athletic director Dennis Kiah remembers the days when Big East had a working agreement with the Kennebec Valley Athletic Conference to play games. However, the conferences agreed to stop playing each other when Big East “B” schools needed the “A” schools to fill out their schedules.

“It’s the best of what we can do,” Kiah said. “I would prefer that we lived in an area where we could play just an ‘A’ schedule but we don’t. And it’s not just a basketball issue. There are only three Class ‘A’ field hockey teams up here.”

People are staying away in droves

The other part of the experiment was for the “A” teams to play their third games against an opponent at a neutral site. Soucy said the Bangor Auditorium was a natural choice. Not only was it neutral, but it gave the teams a chance to play there before the regional tournament rolls around.

But thus far the Big East Conference has taken it on the chin financially.

“It’s kinda the Mecca of basketball. We thought by going to a tripleheader we would get basketball fans and not just parents and hardcore supporters of the school,” Soucy said.

Soucy estimates it costs the conference approximately $1,000 each session. Tickets are $4 and cover the day’s entire session. Schools’ season passes are also being honored. But only 1,499 people have attended games through the four sessions played.

The Big East has three more sessions of three games each scheduled for Feb. 3 and 12 with a marquee matchup of the Bangor and Brewer boys playing Jan. 28 at 7:30 p.m. Earlier this season the teams played to a packed house at Red Barry Gymnasium at Bangor High School. Brewer won that game.

“We’re hoping we can generate crowds like that. But we’re discouraged from the attendance…. We’ll meet in March to review what we’ve done and make recommendations for next year,” Soucy said.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or dperryman@bangordailynews.net