The District 2 basketball tournament season opens Tuesday with six boys quarterfinals and seven girls quarterfinals, including one in a subregional.
There are four boys games in Class 5A and two in Class 3A. On the girls side, there are four games in Class 4A, two in Class 2A and one in the District 2-4 Class 6A Subregional.
NEPABasketball.com editor Tom Robinson, who covers and writes about District 2 basketball for the website, once again will be predicting the outcomes of games throughout the district and subregional playoffs.
Last season, Robinson correctly predicted the winners of 89.7 percent of District 2 playoff games (52-6) and 87.5 percent of the postseason games as a whole (63-9), including state play. For the three seasons that the predictions have appeared on NEPABasketball.com, Robinson has a 171-24 (87.7 percent) record predicting the winners of District 2 games. Those records are broken down further below.
Robinson will handle the predictions throughout the early rounds and then, once again, be joined by a panel of prognosticators for the championship games at Mohegan Sun Arena at Casey Plaza.
DISTRICT 2 PLAYOFF PREDICTIONS
By Tom Robinson
(Home teams in CAPS)
CLASS 5A BOYS QUARTERFINALS
PITTSTON AREA by 12 over Valley View
ABINGTON HEIGHTS by 11 over Crestwood
WALLENPAUPACK by 10 over Tunkhannock
NORTH POCONO by 17 over West Scranton
CLASS 3A BOYS QUARTERFINALS
LAKELAND by 6 over Carbondale
DUNMORE by 20 over Wyoming Seminary
DISTRICT 2-4 CLASS 6A SUBREGIONAL GIRLS QUARTERFINALS
WILLIAMSPORT by 6 over Delaware Valley
CLASS 4A GIRLS QUARTERFINALS
DUNMORE by 33 over Berwick
HOLY REDEEMER by 10 over Nanticoke
LAKE-LEHMAN by 21 over Wyoming Area
SCRANTON PREP by 33 over Honesdale
CLASS 2A GIRLS QUARTERFINALS
Old Forge by 3 over BLUE RIDGE
LACKAWANNA TRAIL by 24 over Mountain View
WHAT TO EXPECT
The District 2 Power Ratings system used for playoff qualification and seeding feels unnecessarily cumbersome at times, but the bottom line is that it works. Since its implementation, silly cases of lower seeds beating higher seeds when any observant follower knew they were highly likely to occur have gone done dramatically.
Now, for the most part, better teams are seeded higher. Upsets will always happen in sports – thankfully, or it could get real boring. But, rank teams properly and throw in the home court for higher-seeded teams and the number of road teams (lower seeds) winning in the early days is likely to again be quite small. There will be many more close battles in the semifinal round than in the quarterfinals and hopefully a handful left for the series of championship games at Mohegan Sun Arena March 3-5.
For openers, however, we are expecting just one on Tuesday and even that prediction is made with some hesitancy. Weeks ago, it would be easy to predict Old Forge, after a season as the smallest school in Lackawanna Division 3, taking care of Blue Ridge from Lackawanna Division 4 girls. Blue Ridge, however, is coming on strong and playing some of its best basketball in years. The Lady Raiders climbed to .500 in their division Saturday in the final game played in the District 2 regular season. That improvement makes it the best match-up of the night, but we’ll still go with Old Forge as the only road winner.
As should be the case, the best matchups are in games between fifth and fourth seeds. Look for Carbondale at Lakeland, in Class 3A, to be the closest of the boys games. Fortunately, the Opening Night matchups may not be too lopsided. I’m expecting the usual suspects, the Dunmore and Scranton Prep girls, to be the only Mercy Rule winners.
RECAP
2019-21 District 2 boys picks: 80-17 (82.5 percent)
2019-21 District 2 girls picks: 91-7 (92.9 percent)
2019-21 total District 2 picks: 171-24 (87.7 percent)
2021 District 2 boys picks: 23-5 (82.1 percent)
2021 District 2 girls picks: 29-1 (96.7 percent)
2021 total District 2 picks: 52-6 (89.7 percent)
2021 state boys picks: 7-0 (100.0 percent)
2021 state girls picks: 4-3 (57.1 percent)
2021 total state picks: 11-3 (78.6 percent)
2021 postseason boys picks: 30-5 (85.7 percent)
2021 postseason girls picks: 33-4 (89.2 percent)
2021 total postseason picks: 63-9 (87.5 percent)
PLAYOFF SCHEDULE: The District 2 tournament pairings and schedule. https://nepabasketball.com/2021-22/D2PairingsReleased.
