Medford Girls Basketball Continues Gaining Respect

The Medford Tigers girls basketball team remains unbeaten this season. The latest Minnesota Basketball News Top 20 has Medford rated #8 in Class 2A. There are five schools ahead in the polls with more than one loss. My assumption the reason Medford is not ranked higher, is the fact their schedule consists of a number of Class A opponents.

The Tigers are in the Gopher Conference which currently has eight teams. Four are Class AA schools and four are Class A schools. There are numerous schools from the area in the latest rankings. In Class A Grand Meadow (which suffered their first loss in a game against defending Class A Champion Lyle/Pacelli) is #2, Goodhue is #3.

The Athletics victory sends a message to the rest of Section 1A that they are not going down without a fight. The Hayfield Vikings are not ranked but have won 14 of their last 16 games. They had a number of seniors last year so it took them a few weeks to find their identity. They were 3-6 in their first 9 games. Unfortunately for them they played Goodhue, Medford and Grand Meadow in those first nine contests.

The Big 9 Conference has three state ranked teams in Class 3A and Rochester John Marshall at #20 in Class 4A. Red Wing is tops in 3A, Mankato West #14 and Northfield #19.

Kasson-Mantorville's win over Austin helped oust the Packers from the polls. My sleeper in Section 1 Class 3A is the KoMets. K-M has lost just one game against teams in their section. The KoMets have won 9 of their last 10 with victories over state ranked Stewartville, Lake City, Austin (at the time) and Zumbrota-Mazeppa.

Kasson-Mantorville has an outstanding point guard in Bailey Berge, Mya Suess can score in the post, their leading scorer is eighth grader Aby Schubert at 11 points a game. Berge and Suess are less than a point behind Schubert so you really can't key on one player and Kasson-Mantorville has seen the emergence of another player who can score double digits any night in sophomore Avery Irish.

The South Suburban continues to have half their teams in the top 19 rankings of Class 4A. #5 Farmington, #9 Eastview, #13 Apple Valley, #14 Shakopee, #18 Lakeville North and #19 Rosemount.

The complete Minnesota Basketball News Girls Basketball Top 20 in each class are below.

Class 4A