Sports commentary: Vikes, Vals face tougher road in Class B tournaments

The Valkyries and Vikings basketball teams have finished their regular season conference games, and both were able to do so without losing a single one, which in-turn earned them each the District 7B Championship.

This week, Bigfork High School's boys and girls teams will face their former Northwest A rivals Whitefish and Ronan, and then it is on to tournament time.

Although the Bigfork teams have had stellar seasons, the road to state will not be an easy one. It must be remembered that Class B does things a little differently than Class A does.

The first stop in post-season play for Bigfork is the District 7B Tournament in Libby from which the top four teams advance to the Western B Divisional Tournament at the Salish Kootenai College in Pablo. Only the top two teams from divisionals advance to state.

For those who were around for Bigfork's Class A years, this may not sound too much different than the path to state in Class A, but the obstacles are somewhat hidden.

When Bigfork plays in the district tournament, they will face five teams that they have already played twice this year. That is the relatively easy part.

The trick comes in at divisionals. Bigfork used to play five teams at the Northwest A Divisional Tournament all battling for two spots. The teams had each played each other at least twice and were familiar with one another as rival area schools.

However, this year Bigfork will face the top four teams from the District 6B Tournament.

The Vikes and Vals have played Loyola once, and both teams lost, but other than that neither the boys or the girls have gone up against the other teams from 6B.

As of last week, the Vikes were ranked third in the Associated Press poll behind Rocky Boy, a District 1B team in the Northern B Division, and Florence (12-1), a 6B team. Just below Bigfork (15-1), was Loyola (11-2), which held the second place spot the previous week. Plains (13-2) has held the fifth place spot for the past two weeks.

Polls are opinion based, and, as many Bigfork residents have pointed out, this particular AP poll has been running some incorrect records for some of the teams the past several weeks.

So, it all must be taken with a grain of salt. However, what can be taken away from looking at these rankings is the simple fact that the Western B Division has four of the five best boys teams in the state.

This makes for an interesting scenario since the Western B Division only gets two spots at the state tournament while the other two divisions, northern and southern, each get three spots this year.

The next two years the Southern B Division is set to get four spots and the northern and western will each get just two.

This system was set up to give more spots to those divisions with more schools in them. The Southern B Division has three districts, while the other two divisions only have two.

The set up for how many spots each division gets is the same for the girls teams. Last week the Vals (13-3) were ranked seventh, having been in 10th place the previous week. Malta (11-0) holds the top spot among the girls, followed by Fairfield (11-1). Both of those teams are from the Northern B Division. Loyola (12-1) has been ranked third the last couple of weeks. Two teams from the Southern B Division and one more from the northern sit in the next three spots. Florence (12-1) is ranked eighth in the poll.

While the Vals will still find tough competition at divisionals in the fight for the two Western B Division spots, especially with Loyola and Florence, there will likely be fewer qualified teams in the hunt.

However, it was just a few months ago that the Vals volleyball team showed us that just because a team goes into divisionals as a team favored to make it to state doesn't mean they'll even make it to the championship game.

Tournaments are filled with surprises and sometimes going in as the top team makes it an even more difficult venture. Added pressure will also come in the fact that neither the Vikes nor the Vals have lost to a 7B team, which puts the odds against them and a bulls-eye on them.

Going into this week, the Bigfork boys had only lost to Loyola, which was a home game back on Dec. 19.

The girls lost to Libby last week, but prior to that they were riding a nine-game winning streak.

All things considered, the BHS basketball teams shouldn't have too much trouble getting through districts. The Vikes and Vals are both the No. 1 seed and they will each have a bye for the first round of the District 7B Tournament.

If they win their first games, they will automatically play in the championship games Saturday night. If they don't win, the road to the big game has more stops, but is possible and a ticket to divisionals is still probable.