Cedar will face Thayer Central; Superior would be next up

LINCOLN — Third time’s the charm?

The Lady Trojans are in their third consecutive state tournament after earning an 8 seed in 2016 and a 1 seed in 2017.

This year, Cedar will be a 5 seed and face off against 4 seed Thayer Central in the first round on Thursday night. The game takes place at Lincoln Southwest at 7:30 p.m.

The two teams have no common opponents from the season. In fact, Thayer Central is close enough to the Kansas border that five of the team’s first six games were against teams from the state to the south.

While Cedar hosts a balanced attack with Jada Cattau, Maddie Wieseler, Brianna Miller, and Abby Hochstein each having over 150 kills on the season, Thayer Central hosts just two to that stature. 

That being said, the top hitter in Class C2, Emily Welch, has 464 kills on the season, and edged out Superior junior and Husker commit Kalynn Meyer for the most entering the tournament.

Superior is most likely who will be waiting for Cedar Catholic in the semi-finals if a win can be obtained over the Lady Titans in the opening round.

It would be a rematch of previous year’s Class C2 state championship game.

To beat this Superior team with just two losses on the year, the Lady Trojans might want to take a page out of rival Crofton’s book.

The Lady Warriors faced the Lady Wildcats in the District Finals, and Crofton had an early 2-0 lead before Superior won three straight sets to advance to State.

Overall, this Class C2 tournament looks to be strong throughout all eight seeds.

Stanton, Cedar Catholic, and Battle Creek have all faced off on numerous occasions this season and are now seeds 2, 5, and 7, respectively.

In fact, Stanton and Cedar faced off in the Top Ten Tournament this summer in Kearney. The Lady Mustangs won that matchup as well as both matchups during the season. 

Stanton is on the other half of the bracket and would only meet Cedar Catholic on Saturday in either the championship or third-place match.

Last year’s state championship loss has weighed heavily on the minds of players like Cattau, Wieseler, Miller, Hochstein and any other Cedar girl from that team.

This year could be the year for the Lady Trojans, but it will be an extremely challenging weekend.