Saturday’s  final between Conant of Jaffrey and Newmarket was between two schools with a lot shorter drive to Manchester and resulted in a standing room only crowd for what, by all accounts, was a great game.

Conant won in overtime to capture its third straight title and SNHU won by exposing itself to a new set of fans across the state.

With Littleton dropping down to Class S next year, fewer and fewer Class M schools find Plymouth a shorter trip. And let’s face it, Foley Gymnasium desperately needs – at the very least – a facelift. The PSU facility has changed little in the last 30 years.

The Class M boys will be back at SNHU next year and maybe the M girls should be there too.

The overall pick? It certainly looks as if Bishop Brady and Bishop Guertin, the Nos. 1 and 2 seeds respectively, can reach the finals. Flies in the ointment? If Concord rights the ship, it could give Brady trouble in a potential semi, while Exeter certainly could give BG all it can handle and more, if the top four seeds remain alive after the quarters. Some question the Blue Hawks’ goaltending, but it’s been good enough to get them the third seed.

The pick: Brady over BG in the finals.

In Division III, Souhegan doesn’t have the scoring depth it had a year ago, and the team it beat in last year’s semis, Kennett, looks awfully good. Souhegan, as it did last year, has to get past Pembroke in the quarters (Saturday at 7 at Hudson’s Cyclones Arena). It says here the Sabers will get past Laconia in the semis, and fall to Kennett in the finals. Tough calls, and hockey is the most unpredictable winter sport. Enjoy the tournaments.

– TOM KING

According to Pinkerton Academy athletic director Bob Royce, who schedules Class L boys and girls basketball, the scheduling is totally random unless an athletic director puts in a request to play a game in a certain time frame.

Nashua AD Angelo Fantasia could ask that North-South, or either school’s games with Bishop Guertin be moved to later in the season. But Royce said he gets very few such requests during the winter season.

"Most request to play a certain school on a certain weekend happen during the fall,” Royce said, "because of homecoming football games.”

Nashua has already put in its request to move the North-South football game to early October, with the hopes of creating a weekend of rivalry games in all sports between North and South, similar to the Mack Plaque weekend games between Pinkerton and Londonderry.

And how is it that Nashua North and Londonderry haven’t met once in the last four years in either boys or girls basketball, even though Class L schools play all but one opponent in the division.

Once again by chance, according to Royce. South and Exeter have also not met in the last four years.

But after sizing him up on film and during a recent basketball practice, the University of Connecticut has landed the athletic, 6-foot-6, 220-pounder.

"I don’t think they took him for a particular positon,” Londonderry boys basketball coach Jim Zorbas said. "They just saw him as a great athlete.”

Griffin played football for three years at New Hampton Prep, but left when the program was de-emphasized, returning to his hometown to play football his senior year.

But that’s where the Cougars were orginally placed, in a division that includes established programs like Bishop Brady, St. Thomas of Dover and Kearsarge Regional.

Campbell, with 575 students, just three more than Gilford, would have been the smallest public school in the division. But with a likely cooperative program being formed between Epping and Newmarket, the Cougars will likely be placed where they’ll be more competitive, in Div. VI.

Division VI will be the only division in the state with 10 teams. All the others will have have nine next fall, creating two open dates for schools in Div. I and Div. II, who play a 10-game regular season schedule.

Somersworth, whose school population puts it in Div. VI, will petition up to Div. V, allowing Fall Mountain of Langdon to drop to Div. VI. The Fall Mountain program has struggled to compete in recent years.

But Plymouth, which will drop to Div. IV after winning nine of 11 Div. III titles, has agreed to play Milford next fall. The Spartans are petitioning up to stay in Div. III.

Souhegan, instead, will renew an old rivalry with Laconia. Crossover games will no count in the standings.

There was also talk at the meeting about the possibility of Epping and Newmarket merging to form a cooperative team. With a combined enrollment in the 700s, the team would likely play in Div. V if the cooperative team is formed.

It would be the state’s third cooperative team. There are currently two in Div. III hockey, Belmont-Gilford and Inter-Lakes-Moultonborough.

Division I remains unchanged, with the same nine teams that competed this fall. Division II’s only proposed change is Goffstown dropping ot Division III.

The new Division III lineup, with Milford committing to petitioning up, includes Milford, Hollis-Brookline, Souhegan, Con-Val of Peterborough, John Stark of Weare, Goffstown, Bedford, Portsmouth and Pembroke Academy.

Milford and John Stark’s likely petition to remain in Division III allows Kennett of Conway and Kingswood to drop to Div. IV, where it will be joined by 2007 Division III champ Plymouth.

The new divisional format of six nine-team divisions, which is expected to pass, would leave two open dates for both Div. I and Div. II. Under the plan, on the opening weekend there would be nine crossover games between the two divisions, with opponents matched up by last year’s record.

So if South and Bishop Guertin are both champions, they would play each other, with Pinkerton opening against Exeter,  Manchester West playing Dover and Winnacunnet squaring off against Londonderry.

The bottom five teams in each division would play the bottom five in the other.