By Ray Hamill — North Coast sports fans have spoken, and the Arcata Tigers are the overwhelming favorites to win this year’s Dick Niclai boys basketball tournament.

The Big 5 champs pulled in an impressive 50 percent of all the votes in our readers poll, well over four times the number of votes any other team received.

But while a majority of our readers clearly believe the red-hot Tigers are the team to beat in this year’s H-DNL postseason tourney, the voting was very evenly split across the board after that.

Del Norte and St. Bernard’s tied for second in the poll with 11.6 percent of the votes each, with South Fork and McKinleyville were right with them and each pulled in 11 percent of the votes cast.

The Dick Niclai tournament gets under way on Tuesday night, with Hoopa traveling to St. Bernard’s and McKinleyville playing at Del Norte.

The winners of those two games will advance to play in Thursday’s semifinals at Arcata and South Fork.