The land of the unbeaten: Who survived?
It was seven weeks ago that we took a look at the teams in boys and girls basketball and boys and girls hockey that had a chance to finish the year with a perfect season.
At the time, there were a whopping 14 teams that had a chance to finish the year perfect.
Of those 14 teams, six of them - Manchester Central and Portsmouth boys basketball; Milford, Newfound and Littleton girls basketball; John Stark-Hopkinton boys hockey - lost a game during the regular season.
That left eight teams that were perfect going into the playoffs, and in one case, two undefeated girls basketball teams in the same tournament.
None of the hockey teams survived, as Salem lost in the Division I semifinals to eighth-seeded Bishop Guertin, and Spaulding fell in the Division II final to third-seeded Dover, a team it had beaten twice during the regular season.
In basketball, five teams could have finished the season unbeaten and five teams did, but in some cases, it came down to the wire.
The Conant girls basketball team finished off its perfect season by handing Gilford its first loss of the year in the Division III final. But the Orioles 22-point win was the anomaly.
On the same day, the Sunapee girls needed everything they had to finish perfect, beating Colebrook 80-72 in a Division IV title game that the Lakers trailed in the second half.
A week later, two more teams completed perfect seasons, but again, not without some nail-biting first.
Like Sunapee, the Pelham boys basketball team wasn't able to pull away until the fourth quarter of a 51-42 win over Conant in the Division III championship game. It was the third time this season the Pythons had beaten the Orioles, and that came only after Pelham escaped a 40-39 win over Campbell in the semifinals - also the third time it had beaten the Cougars.
The Coe-Brown girls basketball team had beaten Goffstown by double digits during the regular season, but the Bears needed a big defensive play in the final seconds and two clutch free throws to beat the Grizzlies 50-46 in the Division II final to remain undefeated.
And in a season full of championship-game drama, the Londonderry boys basketball team saw its undefeated season come within a few inches of ending in the Division I final. If Matt Rizzo's last-second 3-pointer was just a little bit stronger, its Pinkerton that's celebrating its first championship since 2010, instead of the Lancers celebrating their first in a 47-46 win.
Five undefeated teams won their championship games by an average 8.8 points, and if you take out the Conant girls' 22-point win, that average is 5.5.
What's it mean? That its really, really, really hard to finish a season undefeated, and seeing five teams do it in one year is a bit of a miracle.
