The end of summer is nigh. The last tournament of the summer tipped off today at the College of St. Benedict in St. Joseph. The Sweet 16, fully participated on the boy’s end, maybe should be renamed the delightful dozen. Class A only had one team brave (or healthy) enough to show up: Red Lake. That means three vacancies alone in that class. The other class that didn’t field a full four came in AAA with one team missing.

Since it is summer not all the teams involved are not at full strength. Every team in the “East” pool had key starters missing. Stillwater, the AAAA runner up in March, had three players missing, two of which were starters (Liza Karlen, Grace Cote), for a variety of reasons. Austin and Proctor each had a starter missing.

In the recent past the “Dozen” has devolved into an AAAA fest with the final four usually all AAAA teams. That won’t be the case this year. Stillwater did not hold up their end of the bargain as Austin surgically sliced and diced the Pony defense to rally from a first half deficit to move to the final four. Austin’s reward in the semis: Hopkins. Lakeville North had a close shave with recently demoted (to AA) Fergus Falls (66-64). The AAAA margin today was 26.9, three games had over 40+ differential.

There is no truth to a rumorama going around that the MSHSL is going to move to a 5 Class system for girls’ basketball: Hopkins in one class, then AAAA, AAA, AA, A. The Royals more than doubled their opposition today.

I charted only Stillwater games today.  There will be no stat regurgitation, therefore. Tomorrow I will be dialed in on the semis & championship. Stats will be provided then.

The pools were named after directions but did not correspond to actual geographic coordinates.

WEST

Hopkins 80, Red Lake 38

Hopkins 78 Minnehaha 35

Minnehaha 70, Red Lake 65

EAST

Stillwater 70, Proctor 41

Austin 85, Proctor 55

Austin 74, Stillwater 69

SOUTH

Wayzata 66, Waconia 43

Waconia 56, Hawley 51

Wayzata 74, Hawley 26

NORTH

Lakeville North 76, Mankato East 40

Lakeville North 66, Fergus Falls 64

Fergus Falls 51, Mankato East 40