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Wynot will face defending state champ in 1st round

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LINCOLN — The Lady Blue Devils may have the toughest road to a championship game out of Class D2.

To start off, Wynot is facing the defending champion Exeter-Milligan. A win would most likely have Wynot see top seed Ewing in the semifinals, with a chance of it being 8 seed Falls City Sacred Heart if there is an upset.

After winning the championship last year, Exeter-Milligan only earned a 5 seed this year. Last year, the Lady Timberwolves upset top seed Ewing in the championship match.

That is right. Ewing is the top seed for the second straight season. In those two years, the Lady Tigers have gone a combined 46-4 with two losses each year.

Luckily for Wynot, Exeter-Milligan is not a completely foreign opponent. When the Lady Blue Devils were state runner-up in 2016, Big Blue defeated the Lady Timberwolves in the semifinals to advance to the championship game. 

To stop Exeter-Milligan there are two players that cannot go on a run. The Lady Timberwolves only have two players with over 100 kills on the season, but they combine for 766 of the team’s 910 total kills.

Katherine White leads her team with 437 kills, the most of any player in the Class D2 State Tournament, and she is followed by Kate Jansky’s 329, fourth most entering the tournament.

This is a young Wynot team, but juniors and seniors will remember that tournament two years ago.

Other than that though, the two have no common opponents this year.

Only playing 10 matches in September, Wynot has found its stride in October, and now carries a 14 game winning streak that includes seven straight sweeps.

If Wynot advances to the semifinals, a strong Ewing team waits that has seen two recent losses after starting the season 24-0. Those losses come to Central Valley and Chambers/Wheeler Central. CWC is the 6 seed in the D2 bracket, facing 3 seed Mullen in the first round.

During that 24-game win streak, Ewing beat common opponents to Wynot like Hartington-Newcastle, Boyd County, and Neligh-Oakdale. Wynot is 4-1 against those opponents with a loss early in the season to HNS. Ewing is 3-0 against those teams this season.

The Class D2 State Tournament Bracket features some strong teams at the top of the bracket, but at a closer look, it will not be surprising if an upset or two in the first round shakes things up heading into Friday.