We purposely held this Connecticut tournament preview until after the conference tournaments concluded, and the Southern Connecticut Conference title game provided the reason why.
That’s because Lyman Hall and Fairfield Prep — our No. 1 and No. 2 teams in the state, respectively — finally faced off. And even though the game didn’t have any effect on state tournament seeding (Prep already had the top seed in Class LL locked up, as did Lyman Hall in L), it gave both teams a chance at one heck of a closing argument heading into the games that really matter. In the end, Prep bested LH, 4-1, to cement itself as the team to beat in Class LL.
Elsewhere, LL 5-seed Trumbull took down defending Fairfield County Interscholastic Conference champion Fairfield-Ludlowe (the LL 10-seed) to win Connecticut’s deepest conference, and after allowing seven runs in the first inning to Southington (the 3-seed in LL), Hall (the 6-seed) mounted a furious rally to win the Central Connecticut Conference.
All three of those results, and many more from the league playoffs, have implications for how we analyze the upcoming state tournaments. So what is our analysis? Here are five things to watch in the state tournaments:
