Goodhue Seeded Fourth Is Crazy

The Goodhue Wildcats are the Number 4 seed in the Class A girls basketball tournament which begins on Thursday at Mariucci Arena on the University of Minnesota campus.  Minneota got the top seed by the coaches involved in the tournament, Maranatha Christian is the 2 seed and Mountain Iron-Buhl the 3 seed.  I have no doubt the three teams seeded above Goodhue are very good teams and one of them might win the state tournament, but how could these coaches seed Goodhue #4?  Evidently they looked solely at the overall records of the teams.  Goodhue is 25-5 and Minneota is 30-1.  Their only loss to a Class A team Wabasso with 24 wins.  20 of their 27 regular season games were played against Class A competition.  The Vikings are in the Camden South Conference which has one Class 2A school, the North also has one Class 2a school.  Minneota did beat Maranatha Christian during the regular season by 26 points and was 6-0 against Class 2A competition.  Goodhue is in the Hiawatha Valley League Blue Division and is the ONLY Class A school in the conference.  They were 3-0 against Class A competition during the regular season and one of them, Win-E-Mac is in the State Tournament with just 2 losses.  Goodhue is 1-1 against Class 4A schools and the one loss was to White Bear Lake in the Championship game of the Rochester Rotary Tournament where they beat Class 4A Rochester Century and walloped Class 2A Rochester Lourdes by 35.  White Bear Lake made it to their Section final.  The Wildcats were 4-1 against Class 3A competition with their only loss to a Kasson-Mantorville team in the State Tournament and 11-3 against Class 2A teams with two losses to State Tournament bound Kenyon-Wanamingo and the other loss to a Hayfield team that was in their Subsection Championship against K-W.  The coaches have access to this information just like I do.  To seed Minneota #1 doesn't upset me as much as seeding Goodhue #4, although I think I just made a pretty good case for them to be #1, I don't think they should've been any lower than a #2 seed.  The coaches asked for seeding and that's what they got.  You have to wonder if some of the coaches looked at the teams and seeded an opponent based on who they would like to play rather than who has EARNED the seed. You don't seed yourself, but for example Maranatha could've seeded Minneota #1 because they knew they would be a #2 or #3 seed and placed Goodhue at #4 so Minneota would be in the opposite bracket. After all they did lose to them this year.  I'm not saying that's what happened, I'm simply pointing out it could.  I would propose if you are going to have seedings then have an independant panel of coaches from around the state do them.  Pick coaches not in the same conference who would have loyalties to the team from their conference.  In fact, you could have the Class A Tournament seeded by 2A coaches and the Class 2A tournament seeded by Class A coaches and the Class 3A Tournament seeded by 4A and the 4A by 3A coaches.  I know Goodhue Coach Josh Wieme would tell you to win the State Tournament you have to beat every opponent you see, regardless of the seedings, but if we're going to have seedings, can we please have them make sense???