In the last five seasons, Lake Central's girls basketball team has reached the sectional title game five times.
The Indians won the trophy in 2011, beating West Side 57-35.
If the 2012-13 version of the Lake Central team hopes to make the streak six in a row, they'll have to work through West Side first, not in the championship.
The announcement of the IHSAA's girls basketball postseason draw Sunday saw the Indians set to play the Cougars at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 6 in the first round of the tournament. The winner of that game will meet the winner of E.C. Central, the defending champion, vs. host Munster.
"I think this is a brand new year, and I don't think that we've taken for granted anything that's gone on before us at all," first-year Indians coach Marc Urban said. "So we're not going to think about the past, we're going to worry about what we have right now."
Lowell, which enters the Munster Sectional tied for the best record at 15-3, drew a bye and will play the winner of the Highland vs. Morton game.
The winner from the Munster Sectional will meet the winner of the Portage Sectional in a semifinal of the Valparaiso Regional. Merrillville, which lost its first regular-season game in the last 40 tries to Michigan City on Friday, won't have to meet the Wolves until the championship round.
The Pirates will open the postseason against Portage, then play the winner of Valparaiso vs. Hobart. Michigan City will play Crown Point in the first round, a rematch of last year's championship game. The winner of Wolves vs. Bulldogs will play the winner of Chesterton vs. LaPorte in a semifinal game.
The announcement wasn't without a few surprises.
In Class 3A, Roosevelt was left out of the bracket for the Griffith Sectional.
IHSAA commissioner Bobby Cox said that Roosevelt didn't register online along with the other 399 schools that will be in the tournament, and didn't respond to repeated phone calls or emails from the association.
"Under our rules, you can enter up to 48 hours late (of the Wednesday entry deadline), and when the 48 hours passes, you are not eligible to enter the tournament," Cox said. "Even if they had contacted us, we'd have let them in, but we get all the way to draw day, and we still haven't heard from them.
"They were not drawn into the tournament, because there was no way for us to know if they have a basketball team, maybe they didn't want to play."
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