REGIONAL- The North Woods Grizzlies and Ely Timberwolves will face tough competition for their opening round games in the Section 7A tournament this week, although as a No. 4 seed North Woods will have home court advantage.

North Woods
The 21-5 Grizzlies will match up against No. 5 seed 15-11 Chisholm at 6 p.m. on Thursday, a rematch of a Feb. 23 slugfest at Chisholm that North Woods won 80-78. The Grizzlies trailed for a good portion of that game thanks to a three-ball barrage by Chisholm, but retook the lead in the second half and turned away a late Bluestreaks bid for the win. North Woods holds an edge in the QRF formula used for seedings with a No. 18 state ranking in Class A compared to Chisolm’s 38th place mark. For the season North Woods is averaging 20 points more per game than the Bluestreaks.
Should the Grizzlies win, there’s no doubt a gargantuan task will face them in the next round – trying to take down Class A’s No. 1 ranked team, the Cherry Tigers. The Tigers are on a roll with a 17-game winning streak, with their only two losses this season coming against Class AAAA schools. They’ve outscored their opponents by an average of 90-57 and beat the Grizzles 99-57 in January. The Tigers’ top QRF ranking value is 158, a huge 60 points higher than any other team in Section 7A. While an upset is never out of the question, the Grizzlies will need near perfection in every aspect of their game to advance against the Tigers. This quarterfinals game would be at 4 p.m. on Saturday in Hibbing.

Ely
It’s been an up and down season for the Wolves, and their 11-15 overall record has them slotted as a seventh seed in the tourney. They’ll be on the road on Thursday to face No. 2 seed Mt. Iron-Buhl at 6 p.m. The teams played twice during the regular season, with MIB handily winning both games, 78-58 and 81-41. To keep up with the Rangers will require the Wolves to find some additional firepower on offense, a challenging task against an MIB defense that limits opponents to 57 points per game, just one point less than Ely’s average offensive output.
If the Wolves somehow manage to flip the script and pull off the upset, they will have a quarterfinals game in Hibbing on Saturday at 12:30 p.m. against the winner of No. 3 Deer River and No. 6 Littlefork-Big Falls.
Admission for sectional tournament games is $5 for students and $10 for adults. No passes will be honored. Schools are not allowed to stream sectional games under MSHSL media rights agreements. The Timberjay will post updated game scores on its Facebook page and game reports in the following week’s print edition.