At the beginning of the season I wrote about how it could be a winter for girls basketball for some area teams.

And now that we are on the eve of the tournament it’s time to gage those girls’ teams chances of moving on.

The Austin girls look much like last year’s team that advanced to state expect they aren’t quite as deep and they will have to get a past a much tougher New Prague team this season if they want to get back to state.

The Trojans (20-4 overall) beat the Packers (15-7 overall) 62-30 in the season opener and New Prague hasn’t slowed down as 18 of its wins are by more than 10 points.

The Packers have improved since the opener, however, as Rebekah Aasse has stepped it up inside as of late.

To make a serious playoff run, the Pack will have to get past it’s first half woes and keep turnovers to a minimum.

The Section 1AAA tournament starts March 4.

Hayfield, the other area girls’ basketball team that went to state last season, has also been coming on strong as of late. After dropping three out of four in mid-January, the Vikings (19-6 overall) bounced back with recent big wins over Rochester Lourdes (20-4 overall) and Winona Cotter (20-4 overall).

It’s also important to note the Vikings were missing their star center Kiley Severson in two of the three losses during their January skid. When Severson is in the lineup, the Vikings are tough to match up with. Not only because she is 6-1, but because she is also quick on her feet and she goes strong to the hoop.

The junior center turned a lot of heads at the state tourney last season and if she’s 100 percent healthy Hayfield will be a tough team to knock off.

The Vikings biggest problems this season have been free throw shooting and scoring points (they’ve scored 60 points just once this season), but they have excelled on defense (holding opponents under 40 points 13 times this season).

The subsection 2AA tournament starts March 3.

If Hayfield wants to get back to state it will likely have to get past Blooming Prairie (18-5 overall). The Awesome Blossoms lost to Hayfield 46-42 earlier this season, but it was a contest that could’ve gone either way.

BP has waves of players that contribute and any one of them can lead the team in scoring on a given night. This is good and bad for BP’s playoff hopes.

Good because an opponent can’t simply put their best defender on a certain player and limit the offense; bad because I’m not sure if BP has go-to player for the last minute of a close game. BP is just 1-3 in games decided by five points or less this season.

However, sometimes the tournament brings the best out of players and maybe someone, possibly Resha Koster or Lynnae Nelson, will take over that role for BP.

In Class ‘A’, the Superlarks of Grand Meadow have a great chance to make some noise this postseason. They won 20 games for the first time in school history and they have a pretty good cast surrounding the school’s all-time leading scorer in Jessica Benson, who has over 2,000 points in her career.

Besides Benson, Bailey Gomer and Andrea Swanson have both developed into nice scoring options and Alex Swanson and Abbie Fay always give strong energy off the bench.

GM (21-4 overall) has won 15 of its last 16 contests and 11 of those victories were by at least 10 points.

The key for GM will be for the supporting cast to knock down the open jump shot because you know Benson will draw plenty of attention from opposing defenses when the top-seeded Superlarks open the Section 1A tournament against the winner of Hope Lutheran vs. Houston this Friday in Stewartville.