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When it comes to any tournament, fans and sportswriters love an underdog — unless the unheralded team beats your personal favorite.

Usually in Maine high school basketball, the regular season is a good indicator of playoff success. If a team wins 16-plus games, chances are it is a championship-level team. Lose more than half your games, and, to paraphrase a former Patriots (and Giants and Cowboys and, yes, Jets) coach, your chances are probably what your record says they are: not that good.

But there can be variables. Maybe a team was without its star for half the season, and now he or she is back at full strength. One team might have played a tough schedule, the other not so much. The Wells boys in 2019 and 2020, for instance, were 8-10 in the regular season, playing mostly Class A teams, then reached the B South final.

Sometimes there just isn’t that much difference between the No. 2 and No. 7 teams, and all it takes is one player to get hot/go cold on the right/wrong day.

So, here are a few lower-seeded boys and girls teams — arranged in alphabetical order — that we think can throw an upset wrench into this year’s hoops-a-palooza. For our purposes we’ve defined “lower-seeded” as a team ranked fifth or lower.

BONNY EAGLE BOYS: One name. Max Bouchard. The 6-foot-10 senior center can wreck opposing offenses, as he showed in the No. 10 Scots’ mild upset at No. 7 Westbrook in the preliminary round. Bonny Eagle probably can’t play zone against No. 2 Sanford (17-1), as it did against Westbrook. The Spartans have too many good outside shooters. But Sanford also relies on getting points in the paint via back-door cuts and dribble drives. Bouchard makes those hard to convert. If Bonny Eagle can find ways to double Bouchard’s shot attempts (he made 72.4% in the regular season) and limit Sanford’s transition chances, things could get interesting.

CONY GIRLS: A run for the No. 9 Rams (11-8) in the B North tournament will have to go through top-seeded Gardiner, but there’s reason to believe Cony can pull off the upset. This is a team that learns its lessons. After falling 53-37 to Lawrence, Cony won 60-49 in the rematch. The Rams lost 65-42 to Erskine in the regular season but knocked out the Eagles 72-59 in the preliminary round. And that trend was even at work against Gardiner despite two regular-season losses, as Cony fell 58-17 on Dec. 27 but only 49-44 on Jan. 22. Do the Rams have more adjustments to reveal in the third showdown? We’ll see.

MARSHWOOD GIRLS: How about the No. 5 Hawks in Class B South? They’ve spent the entire season playing Class A teams and are 13-5. Do they have a real marquee win? No. But Marshwood did beat the teams ranked sixth through 11th in A South, and four of its losses were against top-five teams in the Varity Maine poll, Cheverus, South Portland, Sanford and Biddeford. The other loss was to Windham, ranked No. 5 in A South. You can be sure their Class B South quarterfinal opponent, No. 4 Greely (also 13-5), is concerned about Isabelle Tice, Natalie Lathrop and Renee St. Pierre.

ORONO BOYS: The Red Riots (12-7, No. 7 in Class C North) have shined in February over the previous three seasons, going 10-1 and winning two state championships. This year, they’ve moved from Class B to Class C, and although they face a loaded Mattanawcook Academy team in the quarterfinals, the Red Riots played the Lynx close in both regular-season meetings. Ed Kohtala’s team knows what it takes to win at the Cross Insurance Center, and a 43-point thumping of Bucksport in the prelims has Orono in a groove heading to Bangor. If anyone can shake up the Class C bracket, it’s the Red Riots.

PORTLAND BOYS: The Bulldogs are No. 6 in Class A South but have factors in their favor, including that they will play on their home court at the Portland Expo. Portland (13-6) faces No. 3 South Portland (15-3) in the quarterfinals. The teams split their regular-season matchups this season. Portland senior Loic Ramazani could be the X-factor. He’s a tenacious ballhawk who averages more than five steals a game. Of late, he’s found his shooting touch from 3-point range.

THORNTON ACADEMY GIRLS: Sophomores and freshmen fill the starting lineup, but there’s a lot of potential with the seventh-seeded Trojans (11-8) in the Class A South bracket. Sophomore Sienna Eldred (13.4 points per game) has improved in her second year, Brooke Bodnar (12.2) and Sophia Sirois — also sophomores — have been solid again, and freshman forward Lydia Lizotte has shown promise in the post. What hurts the Trojans are the final standings, as they will play a Sanford team it lost to by 14 instead of Biddeford and South Portland teams it lost to by three and five points, respectively. But this could be a tricky out.