POLL RESULTS: No firm favorite at the Hardwood Classic

The start of the Hardwood Classic high school state basketball tournaments is just hours away, and there’s optimism surrounding several local teams.

The tournaments begin Wednesday, with the 4A and 3A tournaments in Tacoma, 2A and 1A tournaments in Yakima, and the 2B and 1B tournaments in Spokane. In total there are 11 local teams taking part at state, and this week’s Seattle Sidelines poll asked which teams would go furthest. I did things a little different this week by creating two polls, one for the larger schools and one for the smaller schools. Here’s how you voted.

First the large schools:

POLL part 1: Which local team goes furthest at the 4A/3A high school state basketball tournaments in Tacoma? Full context, and a poll with all participants listed, here: https://t.co/b0GmzkAWVG

— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) February 26, 2018

Since Twitter allows just four answers, and we have more than four teams taking part, the polls don’t correlate exactly, so I didn’t bother adding up the totals. Also, I suspect the Twitter results were influenced by which schools had team members retweet the poll, so I wouldn’t exactly call these numbers scientific. But regardless, there is no consensus on which team has the best chance, with the Stanwood boys (34 percent) getting a slim plurality in the Twitter poll and the Kamiak boys (32 percent) getting the most in the blog poll when every team was listed. In truth, none of our local teams are considered favorites, with all six playing first-round games and none being seeded higher than seventh, so it seems like a crapshoot to me.

Now the smaller schools:

POLL part 2: Which local team goes furthest at the 2A/1A/2B/1B high school basketball tournaments in Yakima and Spokane? Full context, and a poll with all participants listed, here: https://t.co/b0GmzkAWVG

— Nick Patterson (@NickHPatterson) February 26, 2018

Again, there were more teams than the four allowed by Twitter polls, and again I think there was influence on Twitter by which accounts retweeted. Yet there seems to be more of a consensus on which teams have a better shot at advancing, with the Mountlake Terrace boys getting 48 percent on Twitter and 35 percent on the blog, while the Archbishop Murphy girls received 41 percent on the blog and 31 percent on Twitter. This makes sense, since both teams have relatively high seeds (No. 5), and Archbishop Murphy is the only team from our area that earned a first-round bye and therefore has a head start on advancing. The Cedar Park Christian-Mountlake Terrace boys actually are the highest-seeded team from our area, but I suspect they suffered in the voting from their small student population.

For the record, I voted for the King’s boys, who barely recorded a blip in the voting. Yes, they’re a No. 16 seed, and yes they no longer have Corey Kispert. But no local school has a better history of advancing at state, earning placings in 15 of the previous 19 years. So without having seen any of these teams play, I figured I’d roll the dice with history.

I’ll be helping with coverage Wednesday at the Tacoma Dome, drawing the dreaded 9 a.m. game between the Stanwood and Eastside Catholic boys, and also covering the 3:45 p.m. game between the Kamiak and Union boys. We’ll see if our local teams can get past these loser-out first-round games and advance.