Fiddlin' Around

It is time to talk a little basketball! The State B girls tourney will be played in Watertown this weekend.

It is somewhat unique this year, because both defending champions are in the tourney. You ask how can that be? Well, Aberdeen Roncalli won the State A last year and is stepping down to Class B this year, while White River actually won the B last year, upsetting Castlewood in the championship game, if memory serves. And the White River girls will indeed be back to defend their 2021 State B title.

It won't be easy, but White River is seeded fifth this year and will open against fourth-seeded Corsica-Stickney in their Thursday opener. And that places them right into the same bracket with Roncalli, which opens the tourney as the top seed vs. Viborg-Hurley.

The evening bracket will then feature second-seeded De Smet vs. Aberdeen Christian. You have that right, both Aberdeen schools qualified for the girls' B this year.

The tourney will end up its first day, featuring, two West River teams third-seeded Wall vs. Faith.

With the eight statewide SoDak 16 survivors who qualified for the state meet, there aren't really any relatively poor teams in the event, which can quite often lead to more than one Thursday nail-biter.

And what about the NCAA Summit League? Those finals were to guarantee all Dakota teams in their respective women's and men's title games, automatically qualifying them for their respective Big Dance. The women's showdown would pit SDSU vs. USD and the men's division was to feature another one of those NDSU vs. SDSU championship confrontations also for the I-29 bragging rights, if you will.

It's definitely that time of the year!