By SCOTT SANDSBERRY
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

Intriguing matchups? No clear favorites? Multiple plot lines? You bet. This week's Class 2A boys state tournament has all of that.

The defending state champion, Hoquiam, graduated all five starters from its 28-0 team of last year.

The No. 1 team in the state, Cashmere, comes in on a one-game losing streak.

The team some coaches are pointing to as the favorite, Grandview, has only one player taller than 6-foot-1, and he's a 6-4 center averaging fewer than four points a game.

The team that might otherwise have been the favorite, Lynden Christian, just lost arguably its most valuable player, Greg Burgers -- a third-year starter, an all-league performer and an 18.3-point scorer -- to a knee injury.

The two most explosive offensive players in the tournament -- Chimacum sophomore Steven Gray (27.2 ppg) and Ridgefield's Drew Bleth (26.5) are facing each other on opening day.

Talk about your interesting tournaments.

"It just seems like this year it's kind of wide open," says Grandview coach Scott Parrish, whose 21-2 club -- winners of 15 straight, including an 85-70 district thumping of top-ranked Cashmere -- might be the closest thing to a No. 1 seed as the tourney has.

Though Parrish likes his team, he's not ready to go along with the prevalent talk that the Greyhounds are the team to beat.

"There doesn't seem to be one team that really stands out," he says. "I think anybody that's at the state tournament has a chance of being there Saturday ... and playing late on Saturday."

Nooksack Valley coach Bill Kelly, who knows a thing or two about playing late on Saturday -- he led the Pioneers to the 2003 title after winning four with Cashmere -- likes the Greyhounds.

"From the tapes I've seen and the people I've talked to, I'm looking at Grandview and Medical Lake," Kelly says. "Grandview, I think, with their quickness, their being in the Valley and having good crowd support, and just the way they handled Quincy when Cashmere struggled with them twice ... I think Grandview would be someone to reckon with.

"And Medical Lake, we played them the first game of the year last year and I was impressed with the kids they had coming back (this year). They had some tough, low-scoring games early in the year, but lately they've been playing well. It's not just the Wesley show now -- they have some other kids coming up."

Steven Wesley was this year's Great Northern League MVP for Medical Lake (18-4), and for obvious reasons: He was a triple-threat, scoring at a 19.7-point clip and averaging 13.5 rebounds and 6.3 assists.

In the sense of that versatility, that made Wesley a lot like Lynden Christian's Burgers. But the Lyncs' standout tore his ACL in the district semifinals, and yet managed to beat Nooksack Valley without him. The heroes: Brett Van Weerdhuizen, a 5.6-point season scorer who made a steal and layup to tie the game, and Burgers' younger brother, Kevin, a 6-6 sophomore, who scored the last-second game-winner.

The Lyncs (18-5) still have 6-8 Kyle Coston, who's drawing Division I recruiting interest, but losing Greg Burgers is clearly a loss.

"We don't get as many 'Wow, how did that happen' baskets," says LC coach Vic Wolffis. "I'm telling you, Greg hits four or five baskets a game where he does something strange to get the shot off, kisses it off the glass while he's falling down and winds up on the floor. And the other thing we lose with him out is a guy who handles the ball the majority of the time at crunch time. Now somebody else has to do that."

The best player in the tournament might well be Gray, the Chimacum sophomore for whom double-doubles on the court and college recruiters in the stands are a way of life.

The buzz around the state is that Gray doesn't always bring his "A" game, but that when he does, no one in Class 2A can touch him. The Cowboys' problem will be how to react if some outstanding defender simply takes him out of the game.

And multifaceted Ridgefield might well do that in the opening round. But it probably won't be the high-scoring Bleth who does it; it might well be his younger (though not little) brother, Troy, a solid rebounder and defensive player. Although Ridgefield (21-2) no longer has the offensive wizardry of Jonny Peru to complement Drew Bleth, the addition of the younger Bleth has made them a better team.

"Two years ago we had three kids scoring over 17 a game, and last year it was two over 20," Ridgefield coach Gregg Ford says. "This year a lot of the burden has been on Drew, but the other kids have stepped up. I didn't think we'd be where we're at right now."

Cashmere (20-3) -- with its tourney experience and excellent guard play -- still has to be one of the favorites, the Bulldogs' district loss to Grandview notwithstanding. Quincy, led by prolific scorer Matt Medina, and Castle Rock, led by the very versatile James Gehring, also can't be ignored.

The 6-7 Gehring, the older of two brothers on the team, isn't just a pound-it-inside big guy, though he does average a double-double. He's also a versatile athlete who happens to be the team's best ballhandler and leads the Rockets in assists.