Illinois Preps Insider’s girls baksketball top-20: Regular season finale

Crazy to think the regular season is over. For the most part, the teams everyone thought would be good to start the year have lived up to their expectations.

Anything from 17 on down has been a mess all season, but hey why stop now?

Records don’t matter anymore, conference championships are thrown out the window, it all comes down to who can survive the playoff pressure cooker.

Here are the final regular season rankings.

1. Maine West 1 (28-0) 1

Perfect regular season

2. Mother McAuley (28-2) 2

Finished strong with wins over Simeon and Iggy

3. Whitney Young (23-5) 3

City Champions

4. Benet (23-5) 5

ESCC champs

5. Nazareth (26-3) 4

Bounced back from Benet loss

6. Montini  (27-4) 6

Handed Kankakee first loss of the season

7. New Trier (23-5) 9

Tricky regional draw with Glenbrook South

8. Fremd (26-4)

MSL champs

9. Loyola (22-7)

One of the best defensive teams in the state

10. Simeon (20-10) 7

Losses to the number 2 and 3 teams this week

11. St. Ignatius (22-8) 11

Lot of opportunities to be tested before playoffs

12. Thornwood (24-2) 8

Lost to sub-.500 Bradley-Bourbonnais

13. Marist (21-8) 14

Not much you can do against Maine West

14. Lincoln-Way West (25-4) 15

Pretty ridiculous five win week

15. Evanston (21-7) 16

CSL South champions

16. Minooka (26-3) 18

Dominated the far south suburbs

17. Kenwood (19-11) 16

Tough regional road ahead

18. Wheaton-Warrenville South (19-8) 20 

Clinched the DuKane conference

19. Rolling Meadows (20-7) 19

Just don’t have quite enough to beat Fremd

20. Glenbard West (21-6) NR

One loss since the New Year