THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: State boys basketball didn’t unfold quite to seed

Compared to how the state high school girls basketball tournaments finished up, the state boys basketball tourneys featured a few more surprises — at least according to the seeds.

The boys tournament featured the only No. 8-over-No. 1 upset, with Centennial toppling Lake City in the first 5A game of the tourney.

And while all the state girls champions came in seeded in the top three by MaxPreps, the boys tourney included a fourth-seeded state champion (Melba, over St. Maries in 2A) and a fifth-seeded winner (Kimberly in 3A).

After years of the Idaho High School Activities Association trying to match up regional/district champions vs. runners-up and below in the first round as much as possible, the IHSAA is using MaxPreps’ final regular-season rankings to seed the eight qualifiers for each tournament this year and next.

LET’S LOOK at the numbers from the boys’ tournaments, and compare them to the girls’.

In the boys tournament, No. 1 seeds won two of the six tournaments, and a No. 2, No. 3, No. 4 and No. 5 seed each won one tournament.

For the girls, three of the six champions were No. 1 seeds, and the other winners were two No. 2 seeds and a 3 seed.

All told, No. 1 seeds in the boys tourney went 13-5 (girls were 15-3), No. 2 seeds 11-7 (girls 13-5), No. 3 seeds 11-7 (girls 11-7), No. 4 seeds 8-8 (girls 10-8), No. 5 seeds 11-7 (girls 8-9), No. 6 seeds 7-10 (girls 6-11), No. 7 seeds 2-11 (girls 2-11) and No. 8 seeds 3-11 (girls 1-12).

Top-seeded boys teams that went on to win state titles were Hillcrest (4A) and Lapwai (1A Division II).

Of the other four top boys seeds, one finished second (Camas County in 1A Division II), and two were third (Marsh Valley in 3A, North Fremont in 2A). Lake City was the lone No. 1 seed in either tourney to come home without a trophy.

5A boys champion Owyhee was a No. 2 seed, and 1A Division II champ Rockland was a 3 seed.

Teams seeded 5-8 combined to bring home eight trophies in the boys’ tourney, compared to five in the girls’.

Centennial’s boys were the only No. 8 seed to earn a trophy, finishing runner-up to Owyhee. The Patriots were the only seed lower than a 5 to reach a boys title game.

In none of the boys tourneys did the top four seeds bring home all four of the trophies. In 4A, 2A, 1A D-I and 1A D-II, three of the top four seeds trophied.

CONCLUSION?

Like the girls’ tourney, the boys’ tourney seemed to avoid the top two teams in the state against each other in the first round, which was one of the goals of using seeding, with first-round matchups being No. 1 vs. No. 8, No. 2 vs. No. 7, No. 3 vs. No. 6 and No. 4 vs. No. 5.

So far, so good.

Mark Nelke is sports editor of The Press. He can be reached at 208-664-8176, Ext. 2019, or via email at mnelke@cdapress.com. Follow him on Twitter @CdAPressSports.