To get things started, here are the teams and their respective records heading into the Tournament:
1A Northfield (19-6-3)
2A Mound Westonka (21-6-0)
3A Mankato East (17-9-1)
4A St. Paul United (19-6-2)
5A Blake (24-2-1)
6A Alexandria (14-12-1)
7A Hibbing/Chisholm (17-10-1)
8A Warroad (17-8-2)
Two big questions are:
1. Which teams (one through five) will be seeded, and
2. Can anybody knock off Blake, which most would agree is the overwhelming favorite to win it?
On the first question, here's the "empty bracket" from the MSHSL site:
http://www.mshsl.org/mshsl/showxmlbrack ... acket=7389
And here are the teams that I've divided into three groups for seeding purposes, showing their last (LPH rank) as of 2/15. Nos. 1-3 are pretty much decided IMO:
1. Blake (1)
2. St. Paul United (3)
3. Warroad (4)
We then have four teams that could get Seeds 4 & 5, listed in order of their last LPH rank:
Mound Westonka (11)
Alexandria (12)
Hibbing/Chisholm (13)
Northfield (16)
I briefly looked at each of these team's computer rankings (KRACH, LSQ and QRF) and there is no consensus as to which two should get Seed Nos. 4 & 5. However based on all four rankings it is pretty clear that Mankato East will be designated as one of the three "Random Draws", each of whom I suspect will be praying they don't 'randomly draw' the Blake Bears!
![Wink :wink:](./images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
The answer to the second question - can anyone knock off Blake? - is in my opinion "possible, but extremely unlikely". I don't have any horse in the race, just hoping for a competitive tournament that's exciting to watch.