Stewartville coach Parker Lyga becomes the latest to blast seeding of state tournaments

Stewartville coach Parker Lyga was livid Wednesday afternoon.

His Tigers, ranked third in Class 3A by Minnesota Basketball News in the final regular-season poll, had just lost 57-48 loss to top-ranked two-time state champion Totino-Grace in the state tournament quarterfinals.

“The thing that irritates me is that you come here and get screwed over by the system,” Lyga said. “We’re a team that was ranked third in the state all year long. We’re a team that was top four in QRF. We’re a team that got screwed over by all the coaches here.”

QRF is Quality Results Formula, a ranking system by Minnesota-Scores.net that is used to compare teams.

Lyga’s issue stemmed from Saturday’s seeding meeting for the state tournament. Stewartville (26-4) didn’t get one of the top five seeds. A random draw pitted the Tigers against Totino-Grace (25-5), the top seed.

“I’m pretty emotional about this,” Lyga said.

“That was almost a state championship game in the first round.”

His anger was not directed at Totino-Grace.

“I respect the heck out of that team over there,” he said. “They are the true No. 1 team in the state.”

No. 2-ranked Mankato East (27-2) was seeded second. Alexandria (24-5) was seeded third, followed by Orono (19-11) and DeLaSalle (21-9). The Tigers’ three losses during the regular season were to Mankato East (64-63), Alexandria (63-37) and Orono (64-61). All of those games were played at neutral sites.

Complaints about seeding, particularly the random draw that determine who the three unseeded teams play in the first round, also emerged after the girls hockey state tournament bracket was revealed this winter.

A year from now the fields will be seeded one through eight, eliminating the random draw.

“The field is really strong this year,” Mankato East coach Joe Madson said. “It’s good that we will finally be seeding one through eight. It’s a year late for Stewartville.”