This week's bizarre high school football score

Strus didn't travel. Still a nice shot, though.

 

I thought about starting this as a separate thread, but I already did the Brian Mulroney thing and I'm afraid the mods will accuse me of spamming.

This week is the annual Minnesota boys high school hockey tournament. Regardless, if you're trolling YouTube on Saturday night, the annual Minnesota "All-Hockey Hair Team" video is worth it for the low-fi youth shenanigans. One of the teams from my area is already into the peroxide.

Some of the storylines:
1. Points south? A school from south of the Twin Cities metro area has not won a state hockey championship since the 1990s. The odds of that changing aren't good, but Northfield, home of St. Olaf College, has at least a half-chance in a stacked Class A field that features seven of the top nine teams in the state rankings. The AA South team is Rochester Century/John Marshall, a nice story but not probably a viable option.

2. These guys again? Somewhat unsurprisingly, there are a lot of repeat section champs. Hermantown (full disclosure, in my coverage area) is in the Class A field for the 13th time in the last 14 years. The Hawks have produced NHLers like Dylan Samberg, Neal Pionk and Cole Koepke. At one time Hermantown was Minnesota's darling after losing the Class A title game six consecutive years from 2010-15, but as the state tournament appearances pile up, Hermantown has become one of the state's biggest black hats, mostly because, though they are entitled by enrollment to play in A, they do not opt up to AA, which many schools have done once achieving a certain level of success. Hermantown is the 1 seed this year, but the top three seeds (No. 2 Warroad is on its fourth trip in five years, No. 3 St. Cloud Cathedral is on its fourth trip in six) have a transitive circle with each other.

3. The streak. White Bear Lake has made the state tournament 19 times since 1945. They have lost their first tournament game in all 19 of them. The Bears have a decent chance of breaking that this year in the AA 4 vs. 5 game vs. Grand Rapids (also in my coverage area), if they can overcome their own history.

4. Lou's farewell. Lou Nanne, Minnesota's foremost hockey authority, is leaving the broadcast booth after this year's state tournament, having worked every one since 1964. He is rather infamously biased in favor of Edina, the team the rest of Minnesota loves to hate (they're the direct inspiration for The Hawks in the Mighty Ducks movie). Sure enough, Edina is the No. 1 seed this year, not necessarily because this is a vintage Hornets squad but because upsets and bad geographical spacing knocked out eight of the top-10 ranked teams in Class AA in section tournaments, including the undefeated and top-ranked Minnetonka Skippers, who lost their section final to Chanhassen for the Storm's first trip to Xcel Energy Center. Will "the little town on the west side with a dream" send Lou out in classic style or will the "cake eaters" lose to (gasp!) an outstate team?

Games start Wednesday at 11 a.m. Central with four A quarterfinals, followed by four AA quarterfinals on Thursday, two semifinals in both classes on Friday and the finals on Saturday. Tickets will be hard to come by in an NHL arena for everything from Thursday night on.

 

Not for lack of a rooting section though.

 

How about 15-0 as a bizarre high school basketball score? Granted, the game only lasted two minutes.

Carlisle boys basketball team sanctioned from VISAA

 

Paywalled.

 

Here's what the article quoted from the sanctions letter one of the schools received:

Coach basically went with the Costanza defense:

The offending team has since made it to the state championship, but lost on a buzzer-beater.

 

Starman? You been crossing state lines?

 

Carlisle forfeits? Jim Thorpe's not gonna like it.

 

In the thread someone puts screenshot that pretty clearly shows ball at the rim with .4 on the clock.

 

Because these always end successfully.