[RealJokersWild24]

North Hardin has 4 Sweet 16 wins during the last 20 years. Christian County has 5, including the 2011 state championship. Madison Central has 6, including the 2013 state championship. Hopkinsville has 6 and Owensboro has 5.

Thought it was interesting to notice how most schools that had won State had made a number of appearances around their championship. Also, thought that, if you really dug deep, there'd be a correlation where the more rural a school, the higher concentration of State appearances and/or wins clustered around their run.

To show the strength, depth, and competitiveness of the 11th:

Unless I'm missing someone, the only exceptions to a Champion who didn't have a handful of appearances in that same timeframe was Dunbar (only appearance in the last 20 years was a championship).

Otherwise, the 2001 Lafayette team only appeared again in 2004. Similarly, the 2013 Madison Central teams wasn't really bookended by any appearances, though they did make it in 1999 and 2006.

Otherwise, there's only Jeffersontown, who won in 2006 and only appeared again in 2008, and Elizabethtown who won it all in 2000 and didn't appear again until 2005 (with an entirely different cast).


The point I'm trying to make-- familiarity definitely matters, especially if you are a more rural school. While there's definitely something to be said about schools which are able to win State having the talent to be successful in other seasons, especially those against weaker regions and/or either immediately before or after the pinnacle, as those are the ones in which that same core is intact, I think that it is a bit of a fallacy to abruptly end the analysis there.