District tournaments for Class 2A girls’ basketball wind down today with two championship games on the schedule along with a crucial third place game that will determine the final regional tournament qualifiers.  Ahead of those games, we’ll do our best to lay out the 32-team regional field.
In key games today, Yuma faces Holyoke for the District 2 championship and Dolores challenges Ignacio for the District 3 crown.  The winners earn top eight seeds and the right to play at home next weekend.  Another crucial game sees Ridgway and Telluride square off for third in District 3 and only the winner moves to the regional tournament.  Wray also faces Wiggins for third in District 2 today but regardless of outcome, both teams will advance to next week.
Yuma and Ignacio both won regular season championships and each has a pair of wins over today’s opponents so for projection purposes, we put them in as conference champions with the remaining six teams that have already captured crowns.  Those eight teams would be placed in this order by RPI standings from February 24th (5:00am).

  1. Limon
  2. Meeker
  3. Yuma
  4. Swink
  5. Sanford
  6. Dawson
  7. Simla
  8. Ignacio

Yuma could move past Meeker with a win over Holyoke today as the Indians trail by just .005 in the standings.  Not sure if they can catch Limon as the Badgers have an advantage of .033 in the results from this morning.
In determining the next 24 qualifiers, we give the edge to Ridgway for third place in District 3 as they picked up a couple of narrow wins over Telluride during conference play.  That outcome won’t play a major role in the bracket as the winner either way will likely end up as the 32nd ranked team through RPI.
So the standings of the non-district champs looks like this.

  1. Wray
  2. Del Norte
  3. Heritage Christian
  4. Soroco
  5. Rye
  6. Holyoke
  7. Highland
  8. Peyton
  9. Rocky Ford
  10. Hotchkiss
  11. Denver Christian
  12. Byers
  13. Calhan
  14. Colorado Springs School
  15. Vail Christian
  16. Burlington
  17. Fowler
  18. Rangely
  19. Sargent
  20. Wiggins
  21. Dayspring Christian
  22. Dolores
  23. Center
  24. Ridgway/Telluride winner

 
The 32-teams would then be placed in the bracket based on the RPI standings.  And once regional tournament champions are crowned, the pairings would then be reseeded before the start of the state tournament on March 7th.
 
REGION ONE

#1 Limon  
#32 Ridgway/Telluride  
#16 Peyton  
#17 Rocky Ford  

REGION TWO

#2 Meeker  
#31 Center  
#15 Highland  
#18 Hotchkiss  

REGION THREE

#3 Yuma  
#30 Dolores  
#14 Holyoke  
#19 Denver Christian  

REGION FOUR

#4 Swink  
#29 Dayspring Christian  
#13 Rye  
#20 Byers  

REGION FIVE

#5 Sanford  
#28 Wiggins  
#12 Soroco  
#21 Calhan  

REGION SIX

#6 Dawson  
#27 Sargent  
#11 Heritage Christian  
#22 Colorado Springs School  

REGION SEVEN

#7 Simla  
#26 Rangely  
#10 Del Norte  
#23 Vail Christian  

REGION EIGHT

#8 Ignacio  
#25 Fowler  
#9 Wray  
#24 Burlington  

 
The bracket is void of first round pairings of conference teams but potential Sweet 16 matchups could be filled with those as Holyoke-Yuma, Rye-Swink and Heritage Christian-Dawson are all grouped together.  Travel concerns pop up between Dolores going to the Yuma bracket and Wray headed all the way to Ignacio.  Doubt the committee would move Wray since the Eagles are in the top 10 of RPI but Dolores could kept closer to home and exchanged with either Center or Dayspring Christian.