Joel Willits, sports editor at the Bellevue Reporter (our sister paper), put up his predictions and a look at the 3A basketball state tournament this week in Tacoma.

Joel, who will be covering the Bellevue boys this week, has predictions for both the boys and girls tournaments, but I felt like his predictions were especially dead-on for the girls tournament – check out what Joel thought here.

The Mercer Island girls will face Mount Rainier tomorrow afternoon at 3:30 p.m. A win over the Rams will pit the Islanders against the winner of the Kennedy Catholic/East Valley (Spokane) game on Thursday night at 7 p.m.

A loss to Mt. Rainier pushes the Islanders into the consolation bracket to face the loser of the Kennedy Catholic/East Valley game at noon on Thursday.

From there things get murkier, at least until we know if the team starts off the tourney with a win or a loss.

I’ll be updating live all week from the Mercer Island girls games at the Tacoma Dome on Twitter (MIRsports) and either here or on our Web site .

You might have noticed a story on our Web site yesterday afternoon detailing the first 4A/3A basketball poll done by the Reporter sportswriters. A group of us from around the Reporter newspapers network vote each week on our top 10 picks for the boys and girls teams throughout the state in each classification.

I’ve posted on our site the list for the first week of games. It will be updated each week, probably Tuesdays or Wednesdays. Joel Willits, my counter-part at the Bellevue Reporter posted his thoughts on his blog From the Sidelines.

The Mercer Island girls are currently ranked 6th, the Bellevue boys team was ranked 6th as well. Keep checking back to see how the local teams are doing. Both the Mercer Island boys and girls will be playing at Juanita tomorrow night – the boys start at 6 p.m. and the girls tip off at 7:30 p.m. (note – the times are different than typical regular season games).

Thoughts or comments on the teams listed/voted in this week? Let me know!