Overtime: High school athletics in Connecticut

With wins Wednesday night, Stamford and Trinity Catholic, last year’s finalists, qualified for the FCIAC Tournament, which begins Saturday at Fairfield Warde with four quarterfinal games.

Stamford, the defending champion, defeated Brien McMahon to earn the sixth seed. It will play No. 3 Warren Harding in the noon opener.

That will be followed by a game between No. 7 Trinity Catholic, which lost to the Black Knights in double overtime a year ago but earned its 12th straight conference tournament berth with a win Wednesday over Staples, and No. 2 St. Joseph.

The teams played twice during the regular season, with the Crusaders winning the season opener on Jonathan Boykin’s 50-foot shot at the buzzer and losing in the Cadets’ holiday tournament when Remy Pinson missed a 40-foot shot as time expired.

In the evening session, No. 4 Bassick and No. 5 Trumbull will face off at 5 p.m. That will be followed by a contest between No. 1 Bridgeport Central, the state’s top-ranked team, and eighth-seeded Ridgefield.

Max Coleman of the Trumbull High School boys basketball team has been selected as this week’s winner of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award.

Coleman will receive a plaque and T-shirt from BlueStreak.

Coleman had two strong performances for the Eagles, one of the surprise teams in the FCIAC this year. Coleman finished with 23 points and 10 rebounds in a 58-52 win over Norwalk, then followed that up with an 18-point, nine-rebound effort in 58-53 victory against New Canaan.

Nominations for next week’s award will be accepted starting at noon today and run until noon next Tuesday.

Here again are the instructions for nominating an athlete.

Tonight’s FCIAC Girls Basketball Tournament semifinal games have been postponed until tomorrow night because of the weather. The Ridgefield school system canceled classes today.

The change will also affect the championship game, which was originally scheduled for Thursday.

The new schedule will be as follows, with all games at Fairfield Ludlowe: No. 2 Trinity Catholic will face No. 3 Ridgefield in Wednesday’s first semifinal, at 6 p.m., followed by the game between top-seeded St. Joseph and No. 4 New Canaan.

The two winners will now meet for the title on Friday night at 7 p.m.

Westhill's Cosmo Iadanza is one of the finalists for the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award.

There are four finalists for this week’s BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week award.

They are: Kyle Wehmhoff of the Staples boys hockey team, Max Coleman of the Trumbull boys basketball team, Cosmo Iadanza of the Westhill wrestling team and Mike Sheehan of the Fairfield Ludlowe wrestling team.

The winner, who will be given a plaque and T-shirt from BlueStreak, will be announced tomorrow morning.

When Bridgeport Central was forced to forfeit an opening-night win over Staples for using an ineligible player, the focus was on whether the Hilltoppers’ No. 1 ranking in the state would be affected (it wasn’t).

Little did anyone realize that turn of events will now have a profound impact on the final night of the regular season.

In a year in which few teams have distinguished themselves, we go into tomorrow night with five teams battling for the final three playoff spots in the FCIAC Tournament. One of them is Staples.

Right now the top three seeds — Central, St. Joseph and Harding — are set. Bassick and Trumbull have secured spots.

Then comes the wild race for the sixth through eighth seeds. Interestingly, each school controls its own fate and four of the schools involved play each other. Trinity Catholic, which currently sits in the sixth spot, plays the Wreckers, who are right now on the outside looking in but, with the help of tiebreakers, would clinch a spot. They have defeated three of the other four schools and, in a multi-team tiebreaker, would be holding the biggest card: a win over the highest seeded team, Central.

Ridgefield, which is in the seventh spot, gets in with a win over Greenwich. Stamford and Brien McMahon are tied for eighth place, so the winner is in.

In terms of tiebreakers, Trinity, Ridgefield and Staples are in the best shape, Stamford and McMahon the worst.

While the five teams are just hoping to qualify at this point, positioning is also important in terms of advancing past the first round. The seventh and eighth seeds would have to play, respectively, St. Joseph and Central, widely considered the two best teams in the league.

The sixth seed would face a Harding team that is talented but mercurial.

All of which means there will be a lot of scoreboard watching tomorrow.

And a forfeit that once seemed insignificant now looks large.

Trinity Catholic's Cayleigh Griffin (right) pressures Danbury's Casey Smith during Saturday's game. (Kathleen O'Rourke/The Stamford Advocate).

This was supposed to be the most wide open FCIAC Girls Basketball Tournament in recent memory, the one in which unpredictability would be the rule.

Maybe that will still happen, but there was hardly any mystery in today’s three afternoon quarterfinal games. No. 2 Trinity Catholic routed Danbury by 22 points. No. 3 Ridgefield was 23 points better than Staples. Fourth-seeded New Canaan had the most difficult time, a 20-point win against Stamford.

Maybe Brien McMahon will pull off a surprise against top-seeded St. Joseph tonight, or else we could have the most one-sided opening rounds in a long time.

The four semifinalists will all have a realistic chance to win the title, but right now it would be foolish to bet against Trinity, which has now won 18 of its last 19 games since opening the year with two straight losses.

The Crusaders are arguably the most balanced team in the league, get a strong 1-2 scoring punch from sisters Cayleigh and Mackenzie Griffin, have quality depth and play punishing defense. Today they did a superb job of shutting down Casey Smith, the Hatters’ superb sophomore center, who was held to nine points.

Trinity got a very strong game today out of point guard Erin Sottosanti, who scored 11 points and did an outstanding job running the offense.

Tuesday’s semifinal game with Ridgefield will be tough — the teams played last Monday, with Trinity grinding out a four-point win — and if they can get by that the Crusaders could be looking at a final against either St. Joseph or New Canaan, the teams responsible for two of their three losses.

Right now there is no team playing better than Trinity. And given what happened this afternoon, maybe that will be good enough to hold and get the program its fourth league title in the last five years.

Here are some more photos of BlueStreak-Overtime award winners:

New Canaan girls hockey player Olivia Hompe with BlueStreak’s Matt Stack and Rams coach Rich Bulan:

Westhill hockey player Tyler Rich, center, with Vikings coach Gary McGrath:

New Canaan boys hockey player Tim Nowacki, center, with Rams coach Bo Hickey and BlueStreak’s Matt Stack:

The first pictures of the presentations of the BlueStreak-Overtime FCIAC Player of the Week awards are starting to roll in. Here’s one of this week’s winners, Trinity Catholic girls basketball players, and sisters, Cayleigh Griffin (left center) and Mackenzie Griffin (right center). They are joined, from left to right, by BlueStreak’s Matt Cole, Trinity assistant coaches Kasey Keegan and Maryann O’Leary, and head coach Tom Kriz.

Look for more pictures of winners in the days ahead.