The fifth-seeded Central baseball team opens the postseason by hosting 12th-seed Racine Case in a WIAA Division-1 regional semifinal 4:30 p.m. today in Paddock Lake.

The winner extends its season and continues a path that can be described in one word: Improbable.

In a sectional that features top seed Burlington (24-2), second seed Wilmot (19-5), third seed Bradford (19-4) and fourth seed Tremper (16-8), it will go down as one of the most talented collection of teams in recent memory.

“The team that comes out of here should be favored to win the state championship,” Central coach Randy Appleby said. “With those four teams in front of us, it’s going to be tough but that’s the way the WIAA drew it up and that’s what we have to deal with. We’ll approach it as if we have nothing to lose.”

Each of the top-four teams in the sectional received byes to start the regionals. The regional finals are scheduled 4:30 p.m. Friday. Burlington hosts the Elkhorn-Milwaukee Hamilton winner, Tremper hosts the Racine Case-Central winner, Bradford hosts the Racine Park-Lake Geneva Badger winner and Wilmot hosts the Racine Horlick-Waterford winner.

Sectional is June 8

Barring any upsets, the top four seeds will meet in the sectional June 8 at Lake Geneva Badger.

Burlington, ranked fourth in Division-1 in the latest Wisconsin Baseball Coaches Association poll, has already beaten Bradford and Tremper and knocked off Central twice.

The Demons suffered one of their two losses against Wilmot, splitting a pair of games with the defending state runner-up. Burlington lost to visiting Wilmot, 8-7, on April 29 and claimed a 5-4 victory on May 18 at Wilmot.

The Demons are led by senior right-hander Cody Peterson, the double-play combination of second baseman Mike Porcaro and shortstop Tell Taylor and outfielder Dylan Friend. Porcaro and Taylor are headed to NCAA Division-1 UW-Milwaukee, while Peterson will pitch next year at Madison Area Technical College.

“I’d say (Burlington) is the team to beat, for sure,” Bradford coach Matt LaBuda said. “They’re very solid.”

Wilmot in final last year

With six underclassmen in its starting lineup, Wilmot defeated Bradford 4-2 in last year’s sectional final and eventually lost to Bay Port 3-2 in eight innings in the state championship game.

“If we can make it out of our sectional, I think that would be a nice situation for us,” said LaBuda, who coached the Red Devils to the 2008 State crown. “This is the deepest team I’ve ever had both pitching-wise and hitting-wise.”

Central (14-11-1) suffered losses against Tremper and Burlington and split with Wilmot in the regular season.

“Baseball is a funny game,” Appleby said. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing or when you’re playing, you just don’t know what’s going to happen until you play the game.”

The sectional boasts some of the state’s finest players in Tremper’s Sam Mahar, Central’s Johnny Wilson, Bradford’s Brenden Schulz and Nate Mikolas and Wilmot’s Landon Tenhagen and Brendon Hayden.