Thanks to Ol’ Man Winter (a distant relative to Ol’ Man River) the week was very abbreviated. I was out Monday to Delano. The weather then was NOT ideal, but the action occurred. The roads were not where the action was. What normally takes 54 minutes to travel from Mahtomedi to Delano took a whopping one hour and forty minutes. And the road home, though not on the interstate, was a extremely slow despite no traffic, because of snow compaction and exxxxtreeemly slow cautious drivers. And this winter season of 2022-23 started right away on the first day of practice with snow. It is getting old very quickly. And we still have a solid two months left. Sigh. More exxtreeemly sad news continues below…

WEATHER OR NOT

From Wednesday to Friday the calendar for me was cleared out. This was done early Wednesday, and it was expected for that day. What I didn’t expect was the shutdown extended to Thursday and Friday. So that meant no practice/games during that stretch (for me—there were a smattering of games to the north on Thursday. Add in Christmas & the “travel” day of December 26 and I have six straight days of nothing.

WEEK AHEAD

The Holiday Tournament season starts Tuesday and will be wrapped up by Friday, four days of action prior to the New Year break. Thanks to the calendar, we will now have two straight Saturdays offline. Most of these tournaments are pre-scheduled events. There are some true tournaments. The biggest, as far as I can see, is the eight team bracketed Hill-Murray tournament starting Wednesday.

31 CLUB

Only two games lead to only one 31 Clubber—-Junior guard Bria Stenstrom of Mounds View. She ended up with 34 in that department. Most of that was manufactured with 27 points. Stenstrom was 5/10 on 3s in that game which help explain the 142.1 pp100.

UNBEATEN

Five weeks over, and eleven more teams were lopped off despite the paltry schedule.  28 teams remain with a clean slate. In the big classes Marshall lost to Harrisburg, SD, a school in the Sioux Falls orbit. AA now makes it to a final ten. Four of those teams live in 2AA and another three in 3AA. Next week AA & A will join the single digit parades.

Which team is the next to fall? North St. Paul in AAA. They are in the Hill-Murray tournament.

AAAA 4: Hopkins, Lakeville South, Rosemount, St. Michael-Albertville
AAA 3: Becker, Jordan, North St. Paul
AA 10
A 11

STREAKING

The first list sees familiar face Hopkins leading all with 20 wins going back to last season. The Royals and Mayer Lutheran could see March. The other three teams won’t.

AAAA: 20 Hopkins
AAA: 7 North St. Paul
AA: 7 Minneapolis Roosevelt, St. Clair
A: 8 Mayer Lutheran

SEARCH FOR 100

Some of the movement on the QRF is from teams that were sub-100 last week that have been ‘re-evaluated’ and have seen a bump.  Look for a bigger pop in week 6 during the holiday tournament season.

1-10/9/90%/+0
1-25/22/88%/+12
1-50/34/68%/+6
1-75/42/56%/+3
1-100/47/47%/+4

SEEDING THE STATE

Hard to see the needle move. Is it the temp or lack of games? Quick answer: games.

AAAA

1. Hopkins (6)
2. Michael-Albertville (8)
3. Chaska (2)
4. Rosemount (3)
5. East Ridge (4)
6. Maple Grove (5)
7. Lakeville South (1)
8. Anoka (7)

AAA

1. Becker (5)
2. Benilde-St. Margaret’s (6)
3. Jordan (2)
4. Red Wing (1)
5. Grand Rapids (7)
6. Alexandria (8)
7. Mahtomedi (4)
8. Visitation (3)

AA

1. Providence (5)
2. Minnehaha (4)
3. Albany (6)
4. Perham (8)
5. Duluth Marshall (7)
6. Goodhue (1)
7. Montevideo (3)
8. Lake Crystal-Wellcome Memorial (2)

A

1. Hancock (6)
2. Mountain Iron-Buhl (7)
3. Mayer Lutheran (2)
4. Hayfield (1)
5. Minneota (3)
6. Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa (5)
7. Fosston (8)
8. New Life (4)