The Maine Basketball Rankings Podcast

Back in May, Jay Baines and I recorded the Way-Too-Early Preseason Basketball Poll and then, since it was only May, put it on the shelf. Well now it's overdue! So in two parts: today it's the Girls Mostly-Too-Early Preseason Poll and Thursday we'll do the boys and then it's full-on football until November.

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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I got some predictable pushback for posting about the Biddeford ICE tragedy on social media and it got me thinking about the intersection of politics and sports. So this week's episode is a bit of a departure. Mike Shepherd of the Bangor Daily News joins me to talk about Maine's political climate, the choices that determine how the BDN covers it, and how it's impossible to separate sports and politics.

Midnight Madness kicks off the Fall Sports season and for the second year in a row, Maine High School Football's Andrew Hart and I went live from Morse's Midnight Madness event to talk about the upcoming football season.

While every NBA podcast raced to give their hottest take on the Jaylen Brown trade, Jon Duke and I preferred to take some time to process things and work through the Stages of Grief before rendering judgement. We get into the Celtics' offseason, the media ecosystem's role in the trade, Maine Public's broadcast of the Lobster Bowl, the upcoming high school season and a bunch more!

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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Follow me on Letterboxd: https://letterboxd.com/lmcnelly/

Since 1990, the Maine Shrine Lobster Bowl has raised over $1M dollars thanks to a summer football classic of Maine's recently graduated Seniors. Shriner Joe Hersom joins the podcast to talk about the impact of the game, the importance of the money they're able to raise for hospitals, how the players fundraise, the various events around the game (like the golf scramble), this year's broadcast on @MainePublic , those little shriner cars, and more!

Learn more about the Lobster Bowl: https://maineshrinelobsterbowl.com/

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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OOB's Jason Webber brings a football intensity to everything he does and the podcast is no different. He joins me to talk about the different between coaching football and softball, getting guys to run through a wall, 8-man, his work with WHOU, pier fries, mini golf, and so much more.

It's Regional Final Tuesday for baseball and softball and Marc Calnan from Eastern Maine Sports is here to preview some of the championship tilts, plus talk about the best players and teams he's seen so far this spring and which teams he's surprised are no longer playing. Plus, he talks about Eastern Maine Sports' new podcast and so much more!

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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If you've been following Maine high school basketball for the last 30 years, you've no doubt seen Toby Nelson. Whether it's promoting Foxcroft Academy, doing radio, or broadcasting as part of Maine Public's state championship coverage, Toby has done it all. He joins the podcast to talk about the 50th anniversary of Foxcroft's title, the legacy of Monson Academy, digging into video archives, and so much more.

Also: Rhys reviews *The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act*.

*Toby Nelson** has been broadcasting Maine high school sports for 30 years, including 20 years with Maine Public Television calling state championship games. He got his start at the Bangor Auditorium in 2007 — literally walking past the broadcast table, hearing a producer say someone had called out sick, and running home to grab a shirt and tie. The rest is history.

Beyond broadcasting, Toby is Foxcroft Academy's unofficial historian, spearheading the **50th anniversary celebration of the 1975 state championship** — the school's only basketball gold ball. He tracked down the coach's original scorebook, game-by-game newspaper clippings, photos, and artifacts, then posted daily historical updates aligned to the exact anniversary dates of each game.

His deeper passion project: **Monson Academy**, the small-town school that closed in 1969 and sent its students to Foxcroft. In 1968, just one year before closing, Monson's eight-player squad won the Class S state championship. Toby found a reel-to-reel audio recording of the title game, digitized it at a radio station, and put it online — where it's since drawn hundreds of thousands of views. He also tracked down actual game footage through Northeast Historic Films in Bucksport.

Now he's planning a **Monson Academy Slaters merchandise line** — t-shirts, stickers, and more — with proceeds going toward a new roof on the Monson gymnasium, the last remaining piece of the old academy.

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### Links & Resources

- **Maine Basketball Rankings:** mainebasketballrankings.com

- **Gold Ball Odds (tournament simulator):** mainebasketballrankings.com

- **Northeast Historic Films:** [oldfilms.org](https://oldfilms.org)

- **Monson Academy Slaters Facebook Page:** search "Monson Academy Slater" on Facebook

- **Eastern Maine Sports:** follow on Facebook/YouTube for live streams and coverage

- *Last One Out of Town, Turn Out the Lights* — Dave Albee's book on Foxcroft/Monson basketball history

Cliff Urquhart built a dynasty in Dyer Brook with a Southern Aroostook girls team he led to 5 state titles and one of the more dominant runs any program in the state has seen over the last decade. But earlier this spring, he stepped off the sidelines to take an administrative job even further north at Fort Fairfield. He joined the podcast to talk about that, his time at Southern Aroostook, an unforgettable closed scrimmage with Caribou, and so much more.

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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There's only 2 weeks left in the Spring Sports season, which means it's time to check in with WHOU's Ethan Snow on which baseball teams are contenders for a Gold Ball in late June.

Subscribe to Maine Basketball Rankings: https://www.mainebasketballrankings.com/#/portal

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