PHD Playoff Central: North Dakota’s Big Day.
PHD Playoff Central. Maybe the most exciting day overall in North Dakota high school basketball is today with the Class A state tournament starting and the Class B state tournament bigs being handed out after regional results. Buckle up North Dakota basketball fans, you have a huge day ahead of you.
The Big Stage 1. The Bismarck Civic Center. The game everybody wants to see is Century vs West Fargo and that is the headliner at 8pm tonight. These are two of the three top teams in state so one of the three favorites will be out on night one. Both lost games on the conference tournament they didn’t expect to, which one will make the run? Which team will be in consolation wondering about what could have been?
The top half of the bracket is Minot State versus Devils Lake and Bismarck versus Grand Forks Red River, the bottom have is Davies vs Dickinson and the main event of the evening. Minot beat Devils Lake early in the season by ten points. That is the only semi-final match-up where the teams have played one another this year.
The Big Stage 2.
- Northern Cass vs Oak Grove. The top seeded Northern Cass squad hopes to avoid being Oak Grove’s next upset victim as they have ran through Richland, Milnor/North Sargent, and Enderlin to get in this position. The Grovers fell 103-85 in the game just under four weeks ago.
- Grafton/St. Thomas took out one seed Larimore by 20 and now takes on top ten ranked Hillsboro/Central Valley for the region title. The higher seeded Burros won the earlier match-up by six.
- Edgeley and Strasburg/Zeeland, Connor Entzi and Brody Nieuswma go their teams to the position they were hoping for. Now who is going to go to state? The Rebels won the first game they played but often the big games go to the guards. Will that be true tonight?
- Dunseith squeezed by North Star, they will have to do a whole lot more than that to beat Four Winds this evening who crushed St. John 78-50 on Tuesday.
- Shiloh Christian vs Solen for the third time. The Skyhawks won the first two games by a combined 33 points. Shiloh hasn’t had a close game since losing to Four Winds in the final regular season game.
- Top seeds Our Redeemer and Bishop Ryan play in the Minot State Dome with Our Redeemer being a huge favorite. Bishop Ryan has played two close tames to get in this position while Our Redeemer has hammering teams.
- Beulah vs Dickinson Trinity. This is what the region was expected to be. Game time is 7:30 at Trinity tonight actually, the two seed. Good break for them. Beulah won the first game by seven points.
- New Town had one of the biggest upsets of the playoffs knocking out Parshall on Tuesday. Is it a huge upset? New Town is playing very well and could beat Kemare tonight as well who just got by Trinity Christian.