Normally any more I'm not particularly good at predicting the basketball brackets in March at any level of competition from elementary school tournaments on up through the NCAA Division One drama (which is right around the corner starting with some conference tournaments around the nation where at least the winner is guaranteed a spot in the tourney).
The Summit League is our closest NCAA major college division and I was feeling particularly lucky to correctly be able to go out on a huge limb and predict that there will be at least one North Dakota team making the mens' NCAA tourney. That's because NDSU was playing UND Tuesday evening with that winner guaranteed a berth in the NCAA tourney. Two interesting things about that were that it would be exactly the 300th meeting between those two schools and that UND is being coached (starting with this season) by former NSU head coach Paul Sather. Somebody noted that he had been at NSU for almost 10 years, so time does fly. If you'll remember he came to NSU from Black Hills State where he had turned around their program. And I was easily able to guarantee that there would be at least one South Dakota wmen’s team advancing into their NCAA competition, because SDSU and USD were playing each other for the women's Summit League title earlier Tuesday narrowly won by USD.
Now it was also interesting to note that at least one Region 1B boys' basketball team (and a LRC member as well) will be advancing to the State B because Aberdeen Christian and Warner met on Tuesday in the SoDak 16 round for a spot in the State B on March 19-21 in Aberdeen. This will also be the case in our own Region 2, because Sully Buttes and Herreid/ Selby Area played each other in their Tuesday evening winner-take-all SoDak 16 boys drama. So it appears that both Region 1 and Region 2 had one survivor after the SoDak 16 outcomes. (And incidentally they are both in the YTC during the regular-season!)
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