The high school baseball tournament field is set, and for teams like Dirigo and Buckfield, the road to a state championship couldn’t be any shorter or smoother.

For teams such as Edward Little and Leavitt, the road is long and uphill.

Dirigo (15-1) is the No. 1 seed in Western C. Buckfield (15-1) is the top-ranked team in Western D. That means home field through the playoffs up to the regional finals, scheduled for June 12 and 13 at St. Joseph’s College.

The Cougars will have a bye to the quarterfinals, where they will host the winner of next Tuesday’s preliminary between No. 8 Waynflete and No. 9 Old Orchard Beach. The Bucks, meanwhile, have a bye to the semifinals in the five-team Western D field, where they will host the winner of the 4/5 matchup between Forest Hills and Richmond.

Edward Little and Leavitt, meanwhile, will be on the road the rest of the season. It’s just up to them how many times they will be getting on the bus.

EL (8-8) won three of its last four to edge Skowhegan for the ninth and final playoff spot in Eastern A. The Red Eddies will travel to Hampden to face the eighth-seeded Broncos (8-8) in Tuesday’s prelim. The Broncos took the only other meeting between the two teams, 3-1, in the second game of the season.

As their identical records would indicate, both the Eddies and Broncos have had up-and-down years, but the Eddies seem to have more momentum heading into the postseason.  The Broncos have lost three in a row and four of their last five.

“You always want to be playing better, but I feel like we’ve been turning the corner and making some progress,” EL coach Scott Annear said. “We went through a tough stretch but we were also playing some strong baseball teams that are in the playoffs. It was hard to keep their confidence there but, to their credit, they were playing some good ball at the end until we ran into a buzz saw in Lewiston (a 13-1 defeat in the season finale).”

Leavitt earned its first playoff bid since 1998 after it narrowly missed the Western B playoffs the last two years, so the Hornets (9-7) aren’t going to complain about earning the 12th and final tournament slot. Nor can they complain too much about the bus ride they’ll have to fifth-seeded Maranacook (10-6) in Tuesday’s prelim.

“It’s something we haven’t experienced. You think of how many classes have been through there and never made the playoffs and here we are in the playoffs,” Leavitt coach Dave Bochtler said. “We plan to make some noise.”

Maranacook defeated Leavitt, 3-0, in late April. Bochtler expects a sequel to the pitchers’ duel between the Hornets’ Josh Bunker and the Black Bears’ Eben Ballard.

“It was a great matchup the last time they played,” he said. “These kids have been playing each other their whole life, so they’re familiar with one another.”

Dirigo is the hottest team in the state, having won 15 in a row since losing its season opener. But the Cougars plan to approach the playoffs the same way they did the regular season — with tunnel vision.

“I think it was Tedy Bruschi who said a while back when the Patriots had the long winning streak going, ‘We’ve got 15 one-game winning streaks, so we just take it one game at a time,'” Dirigo senior shortstop Caleb Turner said.

In the final two weeks of the season, the Cougars avenged their only loss of the season to St. Dom’s, nipped Wiscasset, 2-0, on a no-hitter by Ben Holmes and edged Telstar, 1-0, in extra innings.

“Those are the kind of games you need going into the playoffs,” Dirigo coach Ryan Palmer said. “It got us off our heels a little bit and now we’re ready for next week.”

Buckfield has also closed out the regular season with some tight games after steamrolling most of the competition through the first month of the season. That’s fine by coach Joe McLaughlin.

“We definitely feel good about ourselves. I like the way we’ve played, especially down the stretch,” he said. “We played in four or five very close games and four or five of our wins we’ve had to come from behind. So we’ve played through some adversity.”

The other top seeds are Bangor and Marshwood in Class A, Presque Isle and Greely in Class B, Orono in Eastern C and Central Aroostook in Eastern D.

Defending Eastern A champion Lewiston is the No. 2 seed and will host No. 7 Brewer in the quarterfinals. No. 5 Oxford Hills travels to No. 4 Messalonskee. All quarterfinals are scheduled for Thursday, June 7.

In Western B, No. 6 Gray-New Gloucester will host a prelim Tuesday against No. 11 Fryeburg Academy. No. 10 Spruce Mountain also has a road prelim Tuesday against No. 7 Lincoln Academy.

In Western C, defending state champion St. Dom’s is the No. 2 seed and will host the winner of the 7/10 prelim between Winthrop and Madison in the quarterfinals. No. 3 Telstar also earned a bye to the quarterfinals, where it will host the winner of the 6/11 prelim between Lisbon and Sacopee Valley.

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