Prep hoops' postseason gets makeover
By By Marty Stamper / EMG sports assistant
Jan. 30, 2004
This year's basketball playoffs will have a different look than in previous seasons.
Four teams will advance from the Mississippi High School Activities Association division tournaments instead of the two teams from days gone by.
It seems that the basketball coaches didn't like the fact four teams were coming out of the football divisions a couple of years ago while they only had two and made a successful appeal for equality.
Baseball coaches must have felt the same way as now four of their teams will advance this spring. Slow-pitch softball took four teams for the first time last fall, although fast-pitch will still only advance two.
For today, we'll leave our thoughts solely with the basketball playoffs.
Granted, if four teams are going to advance in one sport, they should advance in all. What's fair for one should be fair for all. Whether many divisions have four teams good enough to advance is anybody's opinion. Some do have four good teams. Some have maybe one or two at best.
But if basketball folks wanted to be treated like football teams, let's do it right. Only the top four seeds based on the regular season should be able to participate in the division tournament.
If teams have only one or two wins for a 20-something game regular season, why should they be allowed to play in the division tournament? Yes, on any given night they might win. All that does is spoil the season for a team that has performed consistently night after night for around three months.
One would think excellence should be rewarded more highly than flukes.
No wonder Cinderella's step sisters didn't much care for her.
With the change, you could wrap up the division tournaments in two nights instead of four. Somebody might not make as much money, but some of the opening-round crowds are likely to be small any way.
Plus, it would add some significance to the regular season. More people might go to those games. Coaches and players will tell you they're working hard to finish high in the regular season standings so they will get a better seed in the tournament.
The only problem with that is that some will see who they're going to play and began making, shall we say, adjustments to finish where they can play a first-round contest against a team they're rather meet.
One drawback of taking only the four teams to the district tournament would be the host site wouldn't be predetermined so far in advance. That shouldn't be too big a problem. After all, most teams play double round robin schedules so they know how to find their way to the proper location. The ones that don't play double round robin would still be there every other year.
And it isn't likely a host team is fixing to add 800 seats to its gym just for the tournament anyway.
The state's junior colleges did away with their North/South State tournaments where everybody participated a few years back. Only the top four from each division go to the state tournament now, making the regular season very, very important.
As for taking four teams from the high school division tournaments, it'll be interesting to see how that pans out.
Remember, the No. 4 team has just lost in the semifinals and consolation game so that's a minimum of two straight losses. Then that team will hit the road on either Monday (girls) or Tuesday (boys) for what could be a three-hour trip to a No. 1 seed and likely yet another loss.
You think a lot of fans will be hitting the road with their team to see that?
If so, it'll be a big surprise to this writer who has seen an awful lot of games played before less than half-full gyms already.
