New year, new brackets, similar names at the top.

The high school girls basketball state tournament brackets were released Saturday morning ahead of this week’s competition, and familiar squads from last year’s state finals are littered throughout the classes.

Second-seeded St. Michael-Albertville edged top-seeded Hopkins in last year’s Class 4A final. This year, Hopkins is No. 1, and the Knights are No. 3. In Class 3A, defending champ Benilde-St. Margaret’s is again the top seed.

In Class 2A, defending champion Providence Academy is again the top seed and last year’s runner-up, Albany, is seeded second. And in Class A, the No. 2 seed is defending champion Mountain Iron-Buhl. We’ll see if history repeats itself over the next week.

All semifinals and finals will be played at Williams Arena, with quarterfinal matchups split between Williams Arena and the adjoining Maturi Pavilion.

Semifinals and finals will be broadcasted locally on KSTC-Channel 45, and will be streamed at stp.com/45tv/prep45/mshsl-tournaments/.

Quarterfinal action can be streamed on nspn.tv/MSHSL/.

Check out the full brackets on the MSHSL website. Brackets will be updated here daily throughout the tournament.

CLASS 4A

Wednesday’s quarterfinals (Williams Arena)

No. 1 Hopkins vs. White Bear Lake, 10 a.m.

No. 4 Maple Grove vs. No. 5 Lakeville North, 12 p.m.

No. 2 Minnetonka vs. Andover, 2 p.m.

No. 3 St. Michael-Albertville vs. Rosemount, 4 p.m.

Thursday’s semifinals

Winners of first two quarterfinals, 6 p.m.

Winners of last two quarterfinals, 8 p.m.

Saturday’s final

Winners of semifinals, 8 p.m.

CLASS 3A

Wednesday’s quarterfinals (Maturi Pavilion)

No. 1 Benilde-St. Margaret’s vs. Minneapolis Roosevelt, 10 a.m.

No. 4 St. Peter vs. No. 5 Stewartville, 12 p.m.

No. 2 DeLaSalle vs. Totino-Grace, 2 p.m.

No. 3 Alexandria Area vs. Rock Ridge, 4 p.m.

Thursday’s semifinals

Winners of first two quarterfinals, 12 p.m.

Winners of last two quarterfinals, 2 p.m.

Saturday’s final

Winners of semifinals, 6 p.m.

CLASS 2A

Wednesday’s quarterfinals

No. 1 Providence Academy vs. Perham, 6 p.m. at Williams Arena

No. 4 New London-Spicer vs. No. 5 Crosby-Ironton, 8 p.m. at Williams Arena

No. 2 Albany vs. Rochester Lourdes, 6 p.m. at Maturi Pavilion

No. 3 Minnehaha Academy vs. Waterville-Elysian-Morristown, 8 p.m. at Maturi Pavilion

Friday’s semifinals

Winners of Williams Arena quarterfinals, 6 p.m.

Winners of Maturi Pavilion quarterfinals, 8 p.m.

Saturday’s final

Winners of semifinals, 2 p.m.

CLASS A

Thursday’s quarterfinals (Maturi Pavilion)

No. 1 Goodhue vs. Mayer Lutheran, 11 a.m.

No. 4 Underwood vs. No. 5 Southwest Minnesota Christian, 1 p.m.

No. 2 Mountain Iron-Buhl vs. Walker-Hackensack-Akeley, 3 p.m.

No. 3 Buffalo Lake-Hector-Stewart vs. Fosston, 5 p.m.

Friday’s semifinals

Winners of first two quarterfinals, 12 p.m.

Winners of last two quarterfinals, 2 p.m.

Saturday’s final

Winners of semifinals, 12 p.m.

Mike Conley noted he’s had good looks from 3-point range of late, but the shots simply haven’t fallen. The veteran guard, who has been a sniper from deep for the Timberwolves this season, is 1 for 11 from beyond the arc over his past two games.

He’s not worried about that. Conley is confident the tide will turn and he’ll get back to knocking down shots at a high rate. But then he was asked by reporters Friday if he was dealing with anything physically at the moment.

“There’s a lot physical. It’s that time of year. Dealing with multiple things — everybody is,” Conley told reporters. “But it’s that time of year. We’ve got a lot of games, playing a lot back to backs, on the road here, so a lot of it could be just trying to get our legs back together, my legs back together. Not too worried about it, but we’re just going to keep moving forward and keep at it.”

Indeed, Friday’s game in Cleveland marked the end of a stretch in which the Timberwolves played four sets of back to backs in a span of nine games. Three of those sets were at home, which helps, but still, that’s a lot of wear and tear on the bodies for the Wolves, who play the Lakers in Los Angeles on Sunday as their current six-game road trip marches forward.

Veteran center Rudy Gobert said he’s never experienced such a stretch in his NBA career.

“It’s unfortunate. But we gotta fight through it, we gotta take care of ourselves. Obviously, we want to win every night,” Gobert said recently. “Going (to the) west coast, we have a little more space between games. NBA season, some stretches are tough, but we gotta use those games to get better and take care of ourselves.”

Wolves assistant Micah Nori, who filled in as head coach for an ill Chris Finch on Friday in Cleveland, noted Minnesota isn’t the only team to have to endure a congested portion of the schedule. But it comes at a bad time for the Wolves, who just lost Karl-Anthony Towns for the foreseeable future, were without Jordan McLaughin against Indiana and didn’t have Monte Morris in Cleveland.

“Guys are stacking minutes up. I mean , you see Ant — 42 (minutes against Cleveland) after the game he had (against Indiana), and all these guys, high 30s, I think that’s where you maybe see shots come up a little bit short at times,” Nori told reporters.

Case in point: Naz Reid was 7 for 11 shooting from deep on Friday, but his teammates were a combined 1 for 19 from deep. Nori noted Minnesota’s schedule does lighten up in terms of the actual volume of games from here.

“We play every other day and then we have that three-day stretch before we go into Utah,” Nori said. “But it’s just kind of a cumulative catch up. You don’t really have much practice time, and then it’s fly, play, back to backs, and you really don’t have a lot of time to recover to fill your tank back up.”

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Yes, the Detroit Lions are in the Chicago Bears’ division. Yes, the Bears play them twice a year.

But we can’t help but root for the Lions as they make their improbable way through the NFL playoff gauntlet and are one win away from their first-ever Super Bowl appearance.

Chicagoans can relate. Lions Nation is one fan base that has seen almost nothing but failure in the nearly six decades that make up the Super Bowl era. One measly playoff win in all that time.

The Bears put their fans through a lot of disappointment on the field, verging on abject embarrassment sometimes. But we at least can (and do) continue to bask in the brutal majesty of the 1985-86 Bears. Lions fans have Barry Sanders highlights on YouTube, and that’s pretty much it.

Also, as fellow Upper Midwesterners, we ought to have each other’s backs, with the obvious exception of the Green Bay Packers, who’ve won quite enough, thank you very much.

The Lions’ success this year is sort of a football version of when the Cubs finally won it all in 2016, some 108 years after last doing so. Watching Lions fans, young and old, celebrate the two playoff victories in their own stadium reminded us a little of the multigenerational delirium that took hold when that Cubs team broke through at last.

It’s a lovely thing to see people bond over something shared, a phenomenon sports at its best promotes more often than just about anything else in this fractious age.

So have your day, Detroit! A lot of us are enjoying seeing folks in our neighboring state experience something for the first time even if they have more than a little gray in their hair.

If the Lions win it all, we will be glad for you. But that pledge is good for this season only.

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