Boys Small Town Champion?

So, the question of the day is, Who is the small town boys basketball champion of Minnesota? Not the small school champion, the small town champion. There are 3, maybe 4, possibilities, the way I see it.

• Henning made its claim with its easy 67-34 (over Spring Grove) and 67-42 (over North Woods) wins in the semis and finals of the Class A tournament.

• Lake City staked a claim, too, with its 51-47 win over Perham for 3rd place in Class AA. What used to be the small town tournament is no longer that, what with the metro all-stars at Minnehaha and Mpls. North playing for the championship. Esko might have had a claim, too, with its narrow 8-point loss to North, but then the Eskomoes lost to Melrose (who had lost to Lake City) in the 5th place game. So it's got to be Lake City in AA.

• Then, you've got to consider Waseca since the other AAA finalist, DeLaSalle, clearly does not come from a small town.

• Finally, I guess you could ask whether anybody in Class AAAA represents a small town.

So, all of this raises a second question. What is a small town? Well, here's what a small town is not. It's not a town in Hennepin or Ramsey County, or anywhere in the 7-county metro area, for that matter. Secondly, it's not a town with 10,000 people or more. Those aren't "small." And, well, some of you may not agree, but in my book it's not a county seat. Relative to the surrounding terrain, at least, a county seat is not truly "small." It's got stuff that other towns don't have, it's got government buildings and courts and like that.

So if you accept my idea of a small town, or even if you don't because this is my blog, here are the small towns that played in the state tournament this year.

Class AAAA--none. Cambridge is a county seat.

Class AAA--Princeton. Waseca is a county seat and Monticello is over 10,000. Surprisingly, Princeton also has a population of less than 5,000 while Waseca is in the 9,000s and Monticello more than 12,000. Even Cambridge is only 8,000.

Class AA--surprisingly, only Esko, Lake City, Melrose and Perham. St. Peter and Redwood are county seats. Lake City finished 3rd so they're the best small town in AA.

Class A--Cromwell, Henning, North Woods (town of Cook), Spring Grove, Springfield and Westbrook-Walnut Grove (both are small towns). Ada is a county seat. Henning won in Class A. They're the best small town in A.

So how can you go about sorting out Princeton, Lake City and Henning?

Princeton didn't play anybody that wasn't AAA or AAAA and went 27-5 (.844). Lake City went 4-1 vs. Class AAA and AAAA (.800) and 24-2 (.923) vs. AA and A. Henning did not play anybody that was AAA or AAAA (.000) and went 31-1 vs. Class A and AA (.969).

QRF, of course, likes Princeton with a rating of 233. Lake City is at 181 and Henning at 129. But, that probably doesn't mean anything. If QRF does anything, it spaces out the 4 classes so that it can penalize schools that play down. But, being honest, everybody knows that sometimes, teams can win playing up a class. AAA is not that much better than AA. AA is not that much better than A.

Henning is a truly great Class A champion, winning 3 games by an average of 65-44 while shooting 50 percent and outscoring their opponents an average of 28-11 off turnovers. Does that mean they could beat Lake City? Yeah, it does. They could. But, they'd be giving up 2-3 inches at every position. They would have to force a lot of turnovers, and in fact Lake City had just 27 turnovers in 3 games including one against the Minnehaha all-stars. Not particularly turnover-prone or anything. And Lake City shot 48 percent, and 40 percent from 3-point range. So, yes, Henning could beat Lake City, and Lake City pretty obviously could beat Henning.

But, could either one beat Princeton? Having just watched Lake City win its 3rd place game and Princeton lose its 3rd place game to Austin, they answer is no. Austin outran and out jumped Princeton, but Princeton was in it inside of 4 minutes. They just couldn't get any stops like they did against Mahtomedi in the 1st round.

So, while Henning is clearly the best small town team relative to its class, a round robin tournament consisting of Henning, Lake City and Princeton would be won by Princeton, the best small-town team in Minnesota. If they had a tournament for small town teams representing communities outside the metro, with a population under 10,000 and not a county seat, Princeton would be the winner.

And the top 5 players in this tournament from small town teams:

Center--Jon Stimmler, Princeton, 6-7, Sr.
Forward--Reid Gastner, Lake City, 6-4, Jr.
Point Guard--Sam Fisher, Henning, 5-10, Sr.
Shooting Guard--Adam Williams, Princeton, 6-1, Sr.
Shooting Guard--Isaac Fink, Springfield, 6-4, Sr.