Quick. Name the only boys basketball team making its fifth straight regional championship appearance.
Hampden Academy? Nope. The Greely powerhouse? Try again. Edward Little? Strike three.
That would be Winthrop — George Stevens’s bid for a fifth region final bit was thwarted with a semifinal loss Friday — which wrapped up a C South championship game appearance with a 40-25 victory over North Yarmouth Academy on Thursday night.
The top-seeded Ramblers face No. 2 Waynflete on Saturday at 7:45 p.m. at the Augusta Civic Center.
It’s become a tradition, and a part of the MPA tournament fabric. You know there will be bands. There will be fans complaining about calls.
And there will be Winthrop, making a run. No matter what the core is, no matter how much talent is taken away by graduations, the Ramblers each year are one of the tournament’s toughest outs.
“I think a lot about how good a program is (is) constant success, year-in and year-out,” Winthrop coach Todd MacArthur said. “We’re now on the fourth wave of players … and for eight years, we’ve been pretty successful.”
The story has been the same with the core of Jacob Hickey and Garrett Tsouprake, Cam Wood and Jared McLaughlin and now Jevin Smith and Ryan Baird. Every year, the Ramblers go as far as they can. There are never No. 8-over-No. 1 or No. 7-over-No. 2 upsets. There are never losses to an inferior team. There’s never a year when MacArthur comes out of the locker room and begins his postgame comments with “I don’t know, I guess we didn’t have it today …”
It doesn’t always mean a gold ball. Winthrop’s been brought down, but it’s taken great teams. George Stevens and Taylor Schildroth got the Ramblers one year. Hall-Dale with Alec Byron and Ashtyn Abbott got them another. Sometimes, they’re just not the best team on the court.
But that’s what it takes. Anything less, and it’s a good bet Winthrop, 12-3 in tournament play in the past half-decade, will be the team finding a way.
“The last five (years), we’ve done a really good job of maximizing our talent and achieving the most that we can,” MacArthur said. “I don’t feel like we’ve ever underachieved. If anything, we’ve always overachieved, and I think that’s because of our core values of hard work, dedication and commitment.”
Opponents have taken notice. They know the Ramblers are always going to be there, they’re always going to be a high seed, and they’re always going to be a pain in the you-know-what to knock out.
Winthrop junior Gavin Perkins looks to pass as North Yarmouth Academy junior Sam Sinibaldi defends. Andy Molloy/Kennebec Journal
“That’s a credit to Todd and what he does, and his coaching staff,” North Yarmouth Academy coach Jason Knight said. “There’s a consistent message and a theme there, and it starts and ends with defense with them.”
Winthrop’s success follows a formula.
For one, the Ramblers take the regular season seriously. You can count the letdowns Winthrop has had over these five years on one hand. The Ramblers have gone 82-8 over those seasons, which has allowed them to enter the tournament seeded — from 2016 on — second, first, second, first and first. Those high seeds allow them to avoid the dangerous high seeds — the Waynfletes, the Hall-Dales, the Boothbays — until as late as possible. That’s not luck, that’s putting the work in.
And that’s part No. 2: Make no mistake, the Ramblers put the work in.
“It’s willpower. We go in every day, and our goal is to make practice harder than the games,” said Smith, a senior forward. “We try to work our asses off, as hard as we can.”
With intensity such a theme at practices, the Ramblers are always well-accustomed to the frantic, chaotic nature of tournament games. MacArthur makes sure that intensity is channeled through the defense, and for good reason. Offense is nice, but can leave you at any moment. Defense should always show up.
“Certainly, the defensive pressure is the hallmark, and what they’ve hung their hat on for years,” Knight said. “They’re aggressive with their man-to-man, and they don’t give you a lot of room to breathe.”
Case in point: Thursday night. Winthrop was, to put it diplomatically, rough on offense. MacArthur said the Ramblers put basketball back 45 years. They still won, because defense is a heck of a fall-back plan.
“We know that our defense in the regular season will transition to the (Augusta) Civic Center, and that’s how we win here,” Smith said. “We’ve been to five straight by our defense. We live and die by it.”
And there’s part No. 3: Winthrop is always prepared.
After Abbott had shredded his team for 26 points and 17 rebounds in the regular season last year, MacArthur made the 6-foot-8 Wood step away from the paint and follow the Hall-Dale star around in the C South final. Abbott had three points at halftime, and Winthrop was up 34-18 and on its way to a runaway victory.
On Thursday, needing to find an answer for Mr. Maine Basketball semifinalist Te’Andre King, who scored 34 points in the quarterfinals against Richmond, MacArthur didn’t over-commit his resources. He knew Winthrop had the better team on the floor, and chose instead to use team defense to pinch King and prevent his drives. King, who didn’t have his shot Thursday, scored one point, and the Ramblers rolled.
“Defense is our main focus. We bring the mentality that no one’s going to outwork us that night,” senior guard Cam Hachey said. “We just always try to play the hardest we can out there.”
It’s worked, and now there’s another team left to play. Waynflete stands in the way of Winthrop and a third state final appearance in four years. The Flyers are fearsome, with a dominant 6-8 center in Dominick Campbell and playmakers all over the place.
The Ramblers, though, will be ready,
“I’m looking forward to that,” Smith said.
Don’t bet against them.
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