Going Way, Way, Way Out on a Limb with Some Sprawl Predictions

We'll start with an easy prediction: Beaver Dam should win our poll. They currently have a comfortable seven vote lead over West Bend East and a nine vote margin over West Bend West with just hours left for folks to weigh in. Anything can still happen, but it would take some doing at this point for the other three challengers to win. (A student section with computer access could probably do it, though.)

As for the actual tournament, we're going to make some predictions with the full understanding that we've made fools of ourselves doing this sort of thing before. Besides, this particular tournament has had a tendency to feature unexpected winners the last couple of years (Burlington in '07 and Watertown in '06).

OK, enough chatter. Here goes nothing (which is probably what these predictions are worth):

POOL A
We agree with the seeding and predict Pius XI will finish first. Second is more of a toss-up. We're going with Kenosha Tremper.

POOL B
Waupun should finish first, but Kaukauna might very well sneak ahead of Westosha. OK, you caught us: We said "might." Our official prediction is Waupun, then Westosha.

POOL C
Muskego first and a rapidly improving West Bend West team second.

POOL D
One -two seeds should finish one-two. That would be West Bend East and D.C. Everest.

POOL E
No idea. None. Absolute zero. If you forced us to choose (and nobody really is), we'll predict that Oshkosh West remains undefeated, at least until Saturday, by finishing first in this pool and Catholic Memorial comes in second. But this pool has late-night tiebreaker written all over it.

POOL F
Here's another tough one. Since we predicted upsets in Pool E, we'll stick with Burlington in the one slot here, followed by Menomonee Falls. We suspect at least 21 Beaver Dam fans are preparing their "I told you so" comments right now so they're ready to send later this evening.

Since we really haven't seen how the tournament progresses after pool play, we'll forego trying to predict anything other than the final winner. In our humble (and thankfully anonymous) opinion, we're predicting that the following team will win it all:

West D.C. Muskwaupunago XI East (er West, er East, er West).