“The York game kind of scared us a little bit,” says Oceanside junior point guard Audrey Mackie. “Luckily, we’ve been in tight situations before. Maybe not this year, but in the past. We know how to handle that, for the most part.” Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
Friday night’s Class B girls’ basketball state championship game will be a first for Oceanside High, so Southern Maine basketball fans can be forgiven if the Mariners are something of an unfamiliar entity.
Based in Rockland, the Mariners were one-and-done in each of the previous two Class B state tournaments, losing prelims to Maine Central Institute in 2019 and John Bapst of Bangor in 2020 (before being reclassified to the South).
They haven’t lost since.
Oceanside went 13-0 in last winter’s pandemic-shortened season against nearby schools in Knox, Lincoln and Waldo counties. This season, with the addition of versatile 6-foot-2 freshman Bailey Breen, the Mariners have rolled through another blemish-free winter.
Not until the Class B South final did an opponent finish within 16 points of Oceanside. The second-seeded Mariners (19-0) held off a late charge by fifth-seeded York – which knocked off No. 1 Wells in the semifinals – to win their first regional title, 56-49.
Oceanside will play North champion Hermon (19-2) at Cross Insurance Center in Bangor at 7:05 p.m. Friday. Hermon was the Class B runner-up to Wells in 2020.
“The York game kind of scared us a little bit,” said junior point guard Audrey Mackie. “Luckily, we’ve been in tight situations before. Maybe not this year, but in the past. We know how to handle that, for the most part.”
Preseasons scrimmages with the likes of Class AA Bangor and Class A Greely gave the Mariners an indication of their potential. Greely Coach Todd Flaherty, who is preparing the Rangers to play Skowhegan for the Class A title on Saturday, said Oceanside “handled us fairly easily” and spread the word among his Class B coaching friends to be aware.
“They just felt like a championship team, even in the preseason,” Flaherty said.
Oceanside freshman Bailey Breen had 19 points, 20 rebounds and six assists in a victory over York in the Class B South championship game at the Portland Expo on Saturday. Brianna Soukup/Staff Photographer
Flaherty said Mackie was particularly impressive, as was Breen. University of Maine Coach Amy Vachon attended the scrimmage and the next day offered Breen a full athletic scholarship, according to Breen’s father and the Mariners’ coach, Matt Breen.
Mackie and Breen each scored 19 points in the regional final against York, and Breen added 20 rebounds and six assists. Mackie was named the tournament’s outstanding player.
“You can’t guard (Breen) with one person, or it’s very difficult to, so she draws double coverage,” Flaherty said. “The Mackie girl almost demands the same thing. So you just don’t have enough girls to go around. They’re very difficult to play against.”
Filling out the starting five are senior Anna Kingsbury and juniors Abby Waterman and Emily Sykes. Waterman is the team’s best defender and a double-digit rebounder who takes advantage of the attention paid to Breen. Sykes and Kingsbury are wing players capable of knocking down open shots and feeding entry passes to Breen and Waterman.
“All five players on the floor can score,” Bailey Breen said. “Our core group has been playing together since fifth and sixth grade, and we’ve learned to play unselfishly. If the double team comes, we know where to go. We just read the defense and don’t really care who scores. As long as we’re playing good basketball and winning, that’s all that matters.”
Matt Breen spent 15 years as a boys’ basketball head coach, first at Rockland and then Oceanside (a consolidation of Rockland and Georges Valley high schools in 2011). A 1,000-point scorer at Rockland as a player, he guided the Mariners to the 2016 Class A boys’ state final, where they lost to Falmouth.
He took over the girls’ program in 2019 but did not coach last winter because of a medical issue. Mackie and Waterman started for him as freshmen, and this winter Mackie moved from shooting guard to the point after the graduation of Grace Woodman, now playing for UMaine-Farmington.
“I thought we had the potential to do some special things,” said Matt Breen, who also had his team scrimmage Class A schools Mt. Ararat and Messalonskee during the preseason. “I knew we had the pieces. Once they started to fit together, things just kind of rolled.”
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