Kade Ippolito’s short jumper with 0.6 seconds left in the eighth overtime gave Greely a 117-115 win over Fryeburg Academy on Tuesday night in Cumberland. Photo from Aaron Wilson video
Hayden MacArthur said “the game was just surreal.”
The Greely High senior reflected a day after helping the Rangers to a 117-115, eight-overtime victory over Fryeburg Academy that had the state’s basketball scene buzzing on social media even before the game finally came to an end.
“All the muscles are sore, 10 times more than if we just played a regular game,” said MacArthur, a guard. “It felt like a fever dream.”
No official records for Maine high school basketball are kept, but many observers believe it is the longest game played in Maine boys’ basketball history.
High school basketball games consist of four eight-minute quarters, but with eight four-minute overtimes, the teams played for twice the length of a regulation game on Tuesday night before Greely’s Kade Ippolito finally won it on a short jumper with 0.6 seconds left.
“My phone has been blowing up, probably from the third or fourth overtime (on),” Greely coach Travis Seaver said. “Crazy is a really good word for it. Looking back, it’s hard to believe it was real.”
The National Federation of State High School Athletic Association’s record book lists a Feb. 29, 1964, 13-overtime North Carolina game in which Boone Trail beat Angier, 56-54, as the nation’s longest high school basketball game.
The NFHS record book’s list of “most overtimes” includes several eight-overtime games. Chris Boone, the NFHS’s assistant director of publications and communications, said the NFHS has no record of any game in Maine going eight overtimes or longer, though the list of overtimes games on its website include no games since 1994.
BY THE NUMBERS
The numbers from Tuesday’s Greely-Fryeburg game were staggering. The teams combined for 232 points. Gunnar Saunders had 40 points and Lorenzo Catana Vallemani had 29 points and 21 rebounds for Fryeburg, while Tyler Pettengill scored 39 and Seamus Raftice had 23 and Ethan Michaud added 21 for Greely.
“The game had everything. It had buzzer-beaters, it had missed layups, it had missed free throws, just huge shots from both sides and huge plays from both sides,” Seaver said. “Overturned calls. It really had everything.”
Fryeburg coach Dan Thomas has never seen anything like what occurred Tuesday night.
“That is, No. 1, the craziest game I’ve ever been a part of. And it’s not close,” Thomas said. “It was an all-timer. … The execution and shot-making ability was something I haven’t seen at the high school level, I don’t know if ever.”
Such a finish seemed unlikely as Greely took a 10-point lead into the final two minutes of regulation, but a Fryeburg rally forced overtime and kickstarted a marathon finish. Dramatic moments kept it going; Pettengill hit two tying 3-pointers in the final seconds of overtimes, including an off-balance one at the buzzer that sent the game to a sixth overtime tied at 100.
“It was a crazy shot, I was in shock,” Pettengill said. “It made me realize ‘Hey, we’re still in this.'”
As the overtimes dragged on, the game seemed to swing on each play.
“It was almost like every bucket you made matters, because we would make a shot, then they’d come down and make a shot,” Saunders said. “It was that tight, every possession.”
Seaver and Thomas said they lost track of which overtime they were playing. Players did as well.
“Even after a buzzer-beater and you’re all hyped, you sit down and you’re just kind of like ‘All right’ and take a deep breath,” Raftice said. “You just push through, and tell yourself ‘four more minutes, four more minutes.'”
A CHANCE AT REDEMPTION
Finally, Ippolito drove to the basket, pump-faked and sank a shot up close just before the buzzer sounded for a ninth overtime. The celebration began, then had to be paused while 0.6 seconds were put on the game clock. Greely then intercepted a court-length pass to seal the victory.
“Just the way the game had gone, you figured someone was going to make a big play on the other side,” Seaver said. “For these guys to have that kind of excitement and memory, it’s huge. … The fact our guys have this in their pocket, and Fryeburg, too, it’s something special. No one I know of can have that feeling.”
For Ippolito (10 points), it was a chance at redemption. The sophomore had missed seven straight free throws, including six in overtime. But with a chance to win the game, he was ready.
“It was a pretty amazing moment that I’ll never forget,” he said. “(The free throws) were in my head, but Coach Seaver told me ‘Forget about it, move on to the next play.’ That definitely motivated me, and we got the job done.”
Six players, three for each team, fouled out, and the coaches found themselves trying to find ways to wring out whatever remaining energy there was in their players.
“I kept asking them ‘Are you tired, do you need a sub?'” Thomas said. “And they all looked at me like, ‘If you take me out, I’m never going to say hi to you again in the hallway.’
“I said ‘Give me one more (possession), give me one more.’ They gave me 607 more.”
For the players, adrenaline kicked in.
“Even after the game, I wasn’t that tired. I was still super-hyped,” Pettengill said. “I ended up going to bed at 4:30 a.m., just because I had so much adrenaline.”
The Greely-Fryeburg game immediately sparked memories of South Portland’s five-overtime 81-79 win against Bangor in the 1992 Class A championship game, played in Portland at was then the Cumberland County Civic Center.
“I must have been asked five times today about that five-overtime game,” said Tony DiBiase, 69, who was South Portland’s coach in 1992.
“To play eight of them, that’s crazy,” DiBiase said.
In 1986, Dexter’s boys beat Rockland, 63-61, in five overtimes in the Eastern Class B final at the old Bangor Auditorium. The game did not start until nearly 10:45 p.m. because the old arena next to Paul Bunyan’s statue had a leaking roof, and it did not end until after midnight.
Portland coach Joe Russo and South Portland coach Kevin Millington were part of a classic double-overtime Class AA championship game in 2016, with Portland winning, 52-50, in front of a packed house at Cross Insurance Arena.
“We had a couple of doubles, but nothing close to eight,” Russo said.
“How do you coach that many overtimes?” Millington said. “You don’t think to sit a guy in the second overtime because you might need him in the eighth.”
Staff Writer Steve Craig contributed to this story.
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