Perfect records in high school sports are heavy things. They look great on the wall of the gym lobby and they look even better in a newspaper headline, but they have a nasty habit of getting heavier the closer you get to June. Every kid in the dugout knows the number. Every parent in the bleachers knows the number. Every opposing coach knows the number, and every opposing coach has been drawing on a whiteboard for two weeks about how to be the one to put a one in the right-hand column.
So when you walk into bracket week with a zero on the loss line, you are not walking in light. You are walking in with a target the size of Sebago Lake.
Which brings us to Maine. As MPA brackets get set this week, the state has eight teams across baseball, softball, and lacrosse entering tournament play either undefeated or with a single loss and an active win streak of at least eight games. Six of them are spotless. Two more are functionally spotless. They are the headliners on the Slate, the favorites on the Bracketology board, and most of the top names on The 207.
Here is the gear change. Let's go team by team, because every one of these stories is a little different and not all of them end with confetti.
Maranacook/Winthrop Girls Lacrosse
Start at the top, because they are the top. Maranacook/Winthrop is 13-0 in Class C girls lacrosse with a 13-game win streak, a GameIQ state championship probability of 45.7 percent, and a team rating of 183.6 that is the highest of any team in any spring sport this year, any class, any gender. The PIR sits at 95.0. They are GameIQ's pick to win Class C girls lacrosse, and by the numbers they are the single biggest favorite to win a state title in any spring sport on the board. That does not mean it is done. It means if you are picking one team in Maine to lift a plaque, you pick this one.
Thornton Academy Boys Lacrosse
The Trojans are 13-0 in Class A boys lacrosse with a streak of 13, a team rating of 177.9, and a PIR of 97.2 that is one of the cleanest numbers on this list. Their state title probability is 24.0 percent. That number looks small for a team that has not lost. It is small because GameIQ has somebody else as the Class A favorite, and that somebody else has also not lost. More on that in a second. Thornton has done everything you can ask. The rest is who else is in the bracket.
Falmouth Boys Lacrosse
Speak of the devil. Falmouth is 12-0 with a 12-game streak, a rating of 157.9, a PIR of 91.7, and GameIQ's pick in Class A boys lacrosse at 30.0 percent. Falmouth boys have a lower team rating than Thornton and a lower PIR than Thornton, but the bracket math and the schedule math give them the edge in the title equation. This is the kind of thing perfect records cannot quite settle on their own. You need a tournament to do it.
Cheverus Softball
The Stags are 15-0 with the longest active win streak on this list at 15 games, a softball-best team rating of 167.2, and a PIR of 98.3. Their Class A state title probability is 26.7 percent and GameIQ likes them to take it. The headline name is Addison DeRoche, the Florida State commit and multi-time Gatorade and Varsity Maine Player of the Year, and the headline number is that nobody in any softball class in Maine has a higher team rating. They have the ace. They have the streak. They have the math.
Washington Academy Baseball
The Raiders are 14-0 in Class C baseball, riding a 14-game win streak, with a team rating of 138.8 and a PIR of 98.2. Their state title probability is 33.1 percent, which is the highest single-class number in baseball anywhere in the state. They are GameIQ's Class C baseball favorite and it is not particularly close in the math. Baseball is the sport where one bad inning in a quarterfinal can erase three months of perfection, and everyone in Washington County knows it. But if you wanted to bet a baseball, this is the one.
Bucksport Softball
The Golden Bucks are 14-1 with a 14-game streak, a team rating of 138.6, a PIR of 98.1, and a Class C softball title probability of 24.6 percent. They are GameIQ's Class C softball pick. The one loss is, in some ways, the gift you want. They have already felt the weight of the L. They know what that locker room sounds like. Now they get to play with a chip and a bracket seed.
Dirigo Softball
Dirigo is 13-0 in Class C softball with a 13-game win streak, a team rating of 113.2, and a PIR of 94.2. Still spotless. Still undefeated. The bracket question is not whether Dirigo is good. They are. The bracket question is whether they have to play Bucksport before the title game, because GameIQ has Bucksport as the Class C favorite and the numbers behind that are real. The deep-bracket draw matters here more than most places.
Katahdin Softball
The Cougars are 12-0 with a 12-game streak in Class D softball, a team rating of 116.2, and a PIR of 98.5 that is the highest of any undefeated team on this list. It edges Cheverus at 98.3 and Washington Academy at 98.2. State title probability sits at 24.5 percent and they are GameIQ's Class D softball pick. PIR that high this late in a perfect season is the closest thing to a clean bill of health that the numbers will give you.
Penobscot Valley Softball
Pen Valley is also 12-0 in Class D softball with a 12-game win streak, a team rating of 105.0, and a PIR of 92.6. Still undefeated. The catch is the same catch as Dirigo's. GameIQ has Katahdin as the Class D softball favorite. Pen Valley has the record. Katahdin has the rating. The bracket gets to be the tiebreaker.
Who Has the Most to Lose
Here is the uncomfortable thing. Three of these undefeated or one-loss teams are not GameIQ's favorite in their own class. Thornton Academy boys lacrosse is 13-0 and Falmouth is the Class A pick. Dirigo is 13-0 and Bucksport is the Class C pick. Penobscot Valley is 12-0 and Katahdin is the Class D pick.
That is a particular kind of pressure. You have done everything a regular season can ask of you, you have not lost a game, and the math still has somebody else holding the trophy in two weeks. The only way to settle that is on the field, which is the entire point of a tournament, and which is why all six perfect records and both one-loss streaks are about to be the most fragile things in Maine.
Bracket week is here.