Up in the (heated, spacious, wonderful) press box at Sun Prairie, I overheard more than one local remark how awesome the Kettle Moraine football team looked Tuesday night in the first round of the WIAA Division 1 playoffs. It was true; KM played a complete game and definitely looked like the better team. Sun Prairie hurt itself with some key penalties and some lackluster moments, but it was a shootout that featured seven of eight touchdowns from more than 23 yards (and the eighth was a 14-yard run by QB Mark Butterfield, who broke a 21-21 tie with five minutes left in the fourth quarter).
It was a lot of fun to attend, and marked an impressive upset for the Lasers, who now get to host a second-round game against Hartford. One thing the Lasers have done is play more kids both ways. The team has never had trouble scoring points with an electric offense centered around Butterfield and Vince Tumbleson -- who had more than 260 all-purpose yards and three touchdowns Tuesday. But they've also been prone to allowing vast quantities of points on defense. That has hurt them in the past, but coach Mike Fink said he's keeping his best athletes on the field at all costs. The result -- consecutive strong defensive performances, including a near-shutout against Mukwonago in the season finale and the playoff win. Without knowing much about the opponent, I wouldn't have given KM much of a shot Tuesday. Now, I can't even be sure a powerful Hartford team can shut them down. Hartford, after all, played in a notoriously weak Wisconsin Little Ten.
Local teams march on: Sussex Hamilton turned another upset by defeating DeForest on the road Tuesday, meaning they get to host Brookifeld Central on Saturday. Central dismissed Hamilton in the regular season by a lopsided margin, and a lot of people see the Lancers as a favorite to pressure for the Division 2 title game. In other words, the win over the Norskies was excellent and unexpected. But beating Central means HHS will have to channel whatever it was that allowed them to hang with state power Stevens Point. Against other playoff teams with the caliber to work deep into the playoffs, the Chargers have been beaten badly by Central and Marquette.
Arrowhead defeating Manitowoc was a no-brainer (they face Oshkosh West on Saturday), and Pewaukee beating Whitefish Bay seemed pretty expected. It sets up the missing piece showdown in the Woodland Conference this year -- Greendale vs. Pewaukee. PHS is 10-0 for the first time in school history, but they dodged a bullet by not facing the Panthers during the regular season. Pewaukee's landmark win came against New Berlin EIsenhower -- a team that had defeated Greendale one week earlier. This meeting ensures the three powers in the conference will all face each other. I think it will be an absolutely brilliant game.
Didn't see that coming: You just don't know how good some teams are in distant parts of the state, compared to teams with lesser records in better football-rich areas. Chippewa Falls was given the one-seed in Division 1 after a 9-0 season, but Bay Port absolutely handled Falls in the first round, 34-14. That puts D.C. Everest in the driver's seat of that block, as they were also undefeated with a two-seed. But all four of those teams -- Bay Port, Appleton North, Everest and Stevens Points -- have buckets of tradition behind them.
Top-seeded LaCrosse Logan was dumped in Division 2 with similar lack of ceremony, 25-14 by Marshfield. In the second round, Marshfield faces River Falls, which also trumped a seeded foe in LaCrosse Central.
Other seeded teams went down as well. At Sun Prairie, one of the locals said he was surprised Madison West got a seed and expected that they'd get thumped. He was right -- a 44-14 shellacking by Oshkosh West might tell you how tough the Fox Valley Association is. All five FVA playoff teams won first-round games. McFarland topped a top seed in Division 3, when Mount Horeb/Barneveld went tumbling. Seeded Wisconsin Dells and Evansville went packing in the same block of 8.
Wisconsin Lutheran Open?: It's hard to not hand the Division 3 crown to Wisconsin Lutheran for the fourth time in five years, and an easy win over St. Francis does nothing to dispel that concept. But the defending champs won't have it easy in the next couple rounds. They'll get Catholic Memorial in the second round, and I guarantee the Little Ten didn't offer an opponent of that caliber. If they survive, it's either Woodland champ Pewaukee or Greendale -- wild cards because the Woodland is so weak save for the three teams at the top. It's hard to say just how good those squads are, especially after Woodland heavyweight New Berlin Eisenhower went down in one of the biggest first-round area matchups, to CMH.
Game of the night? I was surprised to see the Journal-Sentinel send a reporter to the Racine Lutheran/Brookfield Academy game. I figured of all the places to dipatch a reporter on the first game of the night, a Division 6 contest would hardly earn a ripple of attention. But it turned out to be a superb choice. Lutheran won when it fell on a punt in the end zone late in the fourth quarter, 35-34. Hard to imagine there was a better game in the Milwaukee area that night.