Section 2AAA: First Look

<!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Last year Mankato East was the big favorite and the final results proved that favoritism to be correct. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Super Summary</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Last year section 2AAA only had two winning teams and among the winning teams, Mankato East was eight games better than Marshall. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>This season the section should be better. New Ulm, St. Peter and Worthington will all be better. These are teams that bring just about all of their top contributions or at least most of it. New Ulm and St. Peter have all their top players back and while Worthington lost their leading scorer, they played a lot of sophomores. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Marshall was a 20 game winner last year. I think they will still be good but there is some youth stepping into bigger roles, there is not quite the senior talent they had last year, and the line-up will look different. This is still a top three or four team in the section but not a 20 game winner to me. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>As for West and Hutch, I think they will be teams that make teams compete but I don't know that these are going to be teams that hit .500 this year. West has a decent seniors/youth mix so maybe, and I think they will be better than at least five teams in the Big Nine so wins will come there. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Mankato East will again be a top five team in Class AAA but they don't appear to have anywhere near the same depth that Totino-Grace and DeLaSalle have as the top teams in state (in fairness, the only AAAA teams that can match the De/TG depth are Maple Grove, Hopkins, Wayzata, CDH and Tartan, so it's a tough match). I do like East as a clear favorite here though. </p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Top 3 2AAA Players</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>[player_tooltip player_id='1560798' first='Lucas' last='Gustafson'] of Mankato East</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>[player_tooltip player_id='1886972' first='Amari' last='Nobles'] of Mankato East</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>[player_tooltip player_id='2815371' first='Owen' last='Potts'] of St. Peter</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Three Teams That Should Improve Their Record</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>St. Peter (14-14 a year ago)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>New Ulm (9-18 last season)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Worthington (5-21 last season)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p><strong>Three Teams That Might Not Match Last Year's Win Total</strong></p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Mankato East (29-2 last season)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Marshall (20-9 a year ago)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph --> <!-- wp:paragraph --> <p>Mankato West (11-17 last year)</p> <!-- /wp:paragraph -->