Today on the show we announced the "King & Queen of NH High School Basketball".  Here's the podcasts of the announcement of the 12 finalists(6 boys/6 girls) and the interviews we did with the winners.

http://www.wgiram.com/cc-common/podcast/single_page.html?more_page=1&podcast=NEWSSTORIES&selected_podcast=King_of_NH_High_School_Basketball_18_min_1333202739_27516.mp3

http://www.wgiram.com/cc-common/podcast/single_page.html?more_page=1&podcast=NEWSSTORIES&selected_podcast=Queen_of_NH_High_School_Basketball_8_min_1333203244_379.mp3

You can’t teach height.  It’s an old basketball adage and it was on full display at UNH’s Lundholm Gym in the Division 2 semis between 4^th ranked Bedford and #1 Hanover.  Trevor Fahmy dominated inside with a game high 21 points and 15 rebounds to lead his team into Saturday’s Final against #2 Portsmouth.  The 6’8” senior also had help from 6’10” sophomore center Collin McManus who crashed the offensive boards and worked down low for 12 points and 7 rebounds in Bedford’s 54-46 win.  James Caparell pulled down 11 boards as the Bulldogs totally dominated the battle on the glass, out-rebounding the much smaller Marauders, 50-28. 

Hanover had a real tough time shooting over the Bedford defense which held the tournament’s top seed to a woeful 25% clip from the field(15-61 FG’s).  A lot of the misses came from long range as Hanover shot 6-27 or 22.2% from three point land.  Two things that kept the Bulldogs from running away with this one were a whopping 30 Bedford turnovers(21 of them in the 2^nd half) and Dan Gorman.  The 6’4” Hanover senior was the only Marauder that had any amount of success in the paint all night long.  He finished the night with 16 points and 11 rebounds, but perhaps the waves of big bodies Bedford threw at him(4 kids 6’7” or taller saw action) took a toll as the game went on because only 6 of Gorman’s points and just 3 of his rebounds came after halftime. 

Hanover coach Tim Winslow knew the scouting report going in, and he knew what they couldn’t allow Bedford to do if they wanted to win the game.  “When you’re playing a team like that you can’t let their guards attack and you can’t let them get the ball in the position where they can get it down to the box.”  Despite the loss, Winslow was upbeat about the overall state of Hanover basketball. “We’ve had an excellent year.  People had predicted us to be 12^th or 13^th in the state.  We’re a solid program.  We’re gonna be back here in the future.  I think next year we’re gonna be excellent again.”  When I asked the coach to comment on the lack of attention and maybe even the lack of respect his team gets, especially from the southern NH media(like me) who probably didn’t even see his team play this year, which I openly admit that I didn’t...up until tonight.  “That’s the thing about Hanover basketball”, Winslow said.  “If you look at it over the years, and I don’t understand why we don’t get the respect…I mean, we’ve been to the Final Four 5 times in 12 years.  There’s not too many programs in the entire state that’s been to the Final Four that many times.  We’ve won 2 state titles and we lost in the Finals one year.” 

The game started off as a back and forth affair that Bedford led by 1 at the end of 1, 13-12.  Both Fahmy and McManus had offensive rebound and put-backs in the early going to set the tone.  Hanover went cold after a John Flory 3 pointer with 2 minutes left in the 1^st quarter.  At that point it was 12-10 Hanover, but Bedford answered with a 13 to nothing run to take an 11 point lead with 5:40 left in the half.  McManus hit a short jumper in the lane and had another offensive rebound for a score in the run, and when Fahmy followed up a teammate’s miss and was fouled…and then hit the subsequent free throw, the Bulldogs had themselves a commanding 23-12 lead.  Gorman stopped the bleeding with a turnaround jumper at the 5:25 mark, but the damage from the 4 minute and 35 second long scoring drought had been done.  Hanover was able to trim the lead down to 8 by halftime when Roland Herrmann-Stanzel dropped in a shot at the 2^nd quarter buzzer to make it 29-21 Bedford. 

Cyrus Rothwell-Ferraris opened the 3^rd quarter with a shot from the right baseline to make it a 6 point game, but Fahmy answered with back to back lay ups, the 2^nd off a steal and a nice feed from Trevor Glassman that upped the lead to 10 at 33-23.  All Hanover could muster offensively in the 3^rd quarter was 4 points as the Bulldogs size really seemed to be wearing the Marauders down.  When Alex Krass scored with 5:20 left in the 3^rd it was still a manageable 33-25 deficit for Hanover, but Bedford closed the quarter on a 7-0 run capped off by a McManus slam in the final 10 seconds of the quarter that made it 40-25. 

Hanover did end up cutting the lead all the way down to 5 with a Liam Gantrish 3 after a steal in the Bedford backcourt.  That made the score 48-43 with 1:15 seconds left.  Another Bedford turnover gave Hanover the ball back with a chance to get even closer, but Famhy rebounded a missed shot and converted 2 FT’s at the other end to help salt this one away.   That response by Fahmy was exactly what 2^nd year Bedford coach John Langlois said his team needed.  “Any time in basketball, especially with the 3 ball there’s gonna be some runs.  And the key thing is, ‘can you make more runs than the other team and when they start to make runs, can you answer and stop their runs?’  And I thought we did that pretty well towards the middle to 2/3’s thru that 4^th period.”  Now the question is can they do that on Saturday afternoon against Portsmouth?