Holiday Hoops Showcase: Montplaisir's 18 points leads Portsmouth girls past Oceanside

PORTLAND, Maine – What’s not to like. The Portsmouth High School girls basketball team’s seasonal trip to Portland, Maine, to play in the annual Varsity Maine Holiday Hoops Showcase at the Portland Expo has been a great way to say goodbye to one year and hello to a new one.

On Thursday, the Clippers overcame a slow start, using a big third quarter to roll past Maine Class B’s Oceanside, 54-31. Senior Margaret Montplaisir scored 13 of her game-high 18 points during a four-minute span in the third quarter as Portsmouth turned a 22-16 halftime lead into a 45-24 advantage after three stops.

Classmates Mackenzie Lombardi and Avery Romps added 12 and 10 points, respectively. Oceanside, which played without its junior star Bailey Breen (sat with minor injury), got 12 points from sophomore Renee Riplay on four 3-pointers. Breen scored her 1,000th career point last Saturday in a 58-39 win over Spruce Mountain to improve her team’s Class B mark to 5-0.

The Clippers (1-1 in NHIAA Division I) play their final game Friday at 3:30 p.m. against Brunswick, Maine.

Portsmouth girls follow boys' holiday lead

Portsmouth coach Tim Hopley said this is his team’s second trip to the Maine tournament.

“Our boys have played three years here and had a great experience the year before we started coming here,” he said. “It gets us away from any of the teams we see. The competition up here is really, really good.”

Had Breen played, the Clippers likely would have received a better game from Oceanside, which won the 2022 Class B championship and lost in the 2023 regional final. Brunswick, Friday’s opponent, was the 2023 Class B runners-up.

Portsmouth, led by a strong senior class, has made three straight trips to the Division I semis.

“The venue,” Hopley said, looking around the Expo, where the Boston Celtics’ G League affiliate the Maine Celtics play their home games. “You can’t beat a professional court – the lighting and the atmosphere. … It’s an opportunity to be in a different setting. It’s an easy ride. Parents can come up and have lunch in the Old Port if they want to. There’s no negative about it.”

Maine is 'super competitive'

It was special for Romps who had played against some of the Maine girls.

“It’s good exposure playing against different girls,” she said. ”There’s some good teams.”

“Maine is super competitive,” Montplaisir said. “This is an amazing gym. It’s fun to play in it. It’s big. Pros play here. It’s good competition to prepare us for our upcoming (NH) games.”

“We really don’t have a lot of exposure in New Hampshire to arenas like this,” Romps said. “It’s nice to play in here.”

Portsmouth miss playing against Oceanside star Bailey Breen

The only negative was not getting the chance to play against Breen.

“You don’t get an opportunity to play against a player that’s that good very often,” Hopley said. “We play against some teams that have players that are similar to her, so it would have been nice to see her.”

“We came out with the win, but it would have been a lot more competitive with her in the game,” Romps said.

“We had planned to play defense against her, but we did what we had to do,” Montplaisir said.

As for the win, Hopley said, “the biggest thing is we’re coming off a regular-season loss to Londonderry (64-62). It’s a game we didn’t play very well for the most part, really, until the fourth quarter. We played a lot harder (Thursday); we played a lot better defensively as the game went along. We hadn’t seen zone yet. It gave us the opportunity to work some zone offenses we haven’t used yet. It gave us a chance to brush up on that a bit.”

'Good experience' for Clippers

Hopley also thought the Clippers rebounded well and got the ball out in transition well in the second half.

“It was a good, positive experience for us today,” he said. “Now can we be consistent enough to come back tomorrow. That’s the biggest thing. We want to progress every time we go out.”

The Clippers led 9-8 after the first quarter, but then fell behind 16-12 in the second quarter as the Mariners went on an 8-0 run. Portsmouth countered with a 10-0 spurt to end the half, getting 3-pointers from Romps and Montplaisir, to go up 22-16. All told it was a 14-0 run. The Clippers added the first four points of the third quarter to widen the margin to 26-16 before Riplay’s three gave Oceanside a brief respite.

No matter, the Clippers kept coming with a 19-5 surge to lead 45-24 after three stops. The Mariners had actually cut the lead to 32-24 on a three-point play by Sophie Daggett, but Portsmouth ran off the final 13 points, led by seven points from Lombardi, to put the game out of reach after three, 45-24.

“We played really aggressive defense, we got a lot of rebounds,” Montplaisir said of the Clippers’ third-quarter explosion. “It was a whole team thing. We just ran up the floor. We were looking up. It’s just good chemistry.”

Portsmouth returns to its NHIAA schedule Tuesday at Manchester Central/West.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Portsmouth girls beat Oceanside in Maine Holiday Hoops showcase