AUGUSTA – Members of the Houlton High boys basketball team were quite aware of their program?s frustrating heritage, and the fact it had not won a state championship until Saturday night’s 64-49 victory over Jay.

For Shiretowners coach Sean Callahan, it was a topic to be avoided in the week preceding the final game.

“I tried to downplay it all week,” he said. “Even before the Eastern Maine championship, we thought, ‘Let’s just talk about the game and what we have to do, not about the history so much.’ There’s plenty of pressure on these young men, and to put that added pressure on them was too much.”

But when the time was right, it was also a source of motivation for the Shiretowners’ second-year head coach.

“It’s surprising that the Houlton boys had never won a gold ball, because this is a basketball town, it really is,” said Callahan. “People knew about it and talked about it. And I did use it as a motivating factor at the beginning of the year when I wanted to get the guys working really hard on conditioning. I said, ‘Guys, look up on the walls and the rafters, there are no boys basketball banners hanging in this gym. There are a lot of banners, but they’re all for girls basketball.’

“That was something we used to get the players to work hard at the start of the year, but once we got closer to the playoffs we tried to get them to forget it if we could.”

Socoby stands tall in final

Houlton standout Mark Socoby is nearly as well-regarded for his unselfishness on the basketball court as he is for his talent.

But perhaps the 6-foot-6 sophomore’s best trait is knowing when to prioritize one over the other, for when the Shiretowners rallied in the second half to win both their Eastern Maine and state Class C championship games, he simply took over.

In Houlton’s 52-47 win over Washington Academy in the regional final, he played a role in 12 of his team’s final 14 points. Against Jay in the state final, he scored 13 points in the fourth quarter after sparking a 7-0 run over the final 80 seconds of the third period to get the Shiretowners back in the game.

“Socoby comes to play his best in the big ballgames,” said Jay coach Mike Child. “He’s a sophomore and plays like a senior. I thought we did a good job on him in the first half, but in the second half he went off.”

That third-quarter run, which rallied Houlton from a 43-35 deficit to within 43-42, was capped by his fadeaway 3-pointer at the buzzer but began with two brilliant assists, one a no-look pass from midcourt to Jordan Hill that produced a layup.

“Mark’s just got great court awareness, great court vision,” said Houlton coach Sean Callahan. “The guys know that and make cuts because they know he’s going to reward them.”

Socoby was challenged by a tall Jay frontcourt throughout the game, but used his guile to earn 18 trips to the foul line. He made 15 of those attempts.

“At the beginning of the season I wasn’t that great at the line, about 60 percent,” he said. “But I’ve kept working on it and gotten better as the year’s gone on.”

Sabers overcome Valley depth

Part of Valley of Bingham’s strategy in Saturday’s Class D state final against Calvary Chapel of Orrington was to wear down the Sabers with superior depth.

While Calvary Chapel used just six players in the game, Valley used nine – often subbing in four players at a time.

“We thought we were playing enough people so maybe we could wear them down,” said Valley coach Dwight Littlefield, “but that didn’t seem to happen. They just seemed to make all their shots no matter what.”

Not that the Sabers didn’t get tired, they just got their collective second wind in the fourth quarter to pull out a 72-69 victory. Led by senior forward Josh Madden and junior sixth man Bryan Miller, Calvary Chapel outrebounded Valley 10-5 over the game’s final eight minutes and scored seven of its last 13 points directly as the result of offensive rebounds.

“We got tired,” said Madden. “But it’s the state game, the last game of the year. We’ve been playing like this all year, so we just had to keep going to the end.”

Brock a rock for Calvary

Few point guards were able to solve Valley High’s defensive scheme during the Cavaliers’ six-year reign as state Class D champion. But in 6-0 sophomore Brock Bradford, Calvary Chapel had someone with an answer for all that the Cavaliers tried.

After subordinating his own scoring to the hot hands of teammates Josh Madden and Kyle Bradford throughout the Eastern Maine tournament, the 6-foot point guard sought out his own offense more in the state championship game, and finished with a team-high 24 points.

“My dad [coach Ross Bradford] told me that I didn’t really shoot enough in the Eastern Maine tournament, but I didn’t need to because the other guys were all hot,” said Brock Bradford. “But we knew from reading in the paper that Valley was going to try to get out on our perimeter shooters, so that gave me a chance to penetrate the lane, pull up for the jumper or dish the ball inside.”

Bradford came out looking for his own shot early in the state final, making four of eight attempts in the first quarter and six of 12 shots for 13 points by halftime.

He later turned his focus to defense, guarding Mark Gaudet as the focal point of a box-and-one defense in the fourth quarter. That defense held the Valley star to one 3-point basket after he had erupted for 15 points in the third quarter to spark a Cavaliers’ comeback.

“Gaudet was really starting to heat up in the third quarter,” said Bradford. “They set some screens and we weren’t doing real well on switching, and my dad made the decision to go box-and-one and try to step up the pressure on him because he’s an excellent player.”

That was the same description used by Valley coach Dwight Littlefield after the game to describe Brock Bradford.

“He’s a great player,” Littlefield said. “He’s the best point guard we’ve seen in quite some time. He can handle it and set people up, and he can obviously shoot it off the dribble really well.”