Fixing the OHSAA State Basketball Tournament
The OHSAA State Basketball tournament set up is a disaster. Going to the State Tournament each year at the end of March is always one of the weekends I look forward to the most, going back to when I was in the first grade. And that’s not going to change. But the path for teams to get there is so incredibly broken.
There’s been two MAJOR changes to the sport in the past couple years–using RPI for seeding and going to seven divisions. Both of those are here to stay, and I’m 100% all for that. But the tournament setup can’t be run the same way with those two changes. There needs to be two more, and it has to be done the right way.
So, for this exercise I’m going to pretend I’m OHSAA commissioner for a day, and give you the TWO things I would change. Both of which are very easy to do, and should’ve been done long ago. All it takes is these two changes.
1: Do away with the 6 different District Athletic Boards running their own unique district tournament, and go to the Regional model.
This wouldn’t be as big of a priority if it weren’t for the Northwest District Athletic Board ruining it for everyone. The NWDAB assigning teams to districts based on “location,” (or so they say, as long as it benefits the schools the NWDAB members represent) has long been the #1 thing wrong with this tournament. What that does is give you districts that are absolutely loaded with good teams, and other districts where your #1 seed would be a #5 seed in any other district. Fairness and equity across the board is thrown out the window by the NWDAB.
You essentially need to just copy the football model here. Get rid of the District Athletic Boards running their own tournament through districts, and at the beginning of the season, you assign every team not only to a Division, but to a Region as well–just like in football.
So let’s say there’s 40 teams in a region. Those teams are seeded 1-40, and then on tournament draw day, you go right down the list where the 1 picks which district they want to go in, then the 2, and so on. The idea here is creating 4 equal districts in each region that are equal in toughness to the other. It spreads your good and bad teams out evenly across the 4 districts. Shoutout to the Northeast & Central District Athletic Boards who have been doing this already for years!
Sectionals are at the higher seeds home gym, and move to a neutral host site for Districts & Regionals.
And here’s the funny part…two years ago the OHSAA created 4 new jobs - Regional Basketball Coordinators. They assigned those positions to 4 current members on district athletic boards. Those four are the CDAB treasurer Jim Hayes, NWDAB secretary Kevin Calver, SWDAB Class AAA Rep Scott Kaufman, & EDAB secretary Don Spinell. Their job as regional basketball coordinators is to carry out Doug Ute’s responsibilities as Basketball Administrator for the OHSAA. Ya know, what the great Jerry Snodgrass did himself for 12 years as OHSAA commissioner and Basketball Administrator. And I also know that Mr. Snodgrass presented this “regional model” for basketball to the OHSAA board several times during his tenure. The board would look at the maps of where teams were, just to find where the schools that they represented would be. Most thought it wouldn’t benefit their school, so they’d table it month after month and the regional model for basketball died.
So essentially the reason we don’t already have the regional model for basketball is because it doesn’t benefit the individual schools that the OHSAA board members represent. To think those people are acting in the best interest of all member schools would be hilariously naive. All teams need to have the exact same path to making a State tournament. When you have a situation like this year where one team only needs to win 1 game to win a district title, and other teams have to win 4 to win a district title, you know you have a problem.
Mr. Ute, along with his 4 Regional Basketball Coordinators, all need to get together and make this change before next season.
2: Set a date where the regular season ends and tournament week begins, and finalize the RPI seeding on that date.
It’s malpractice that we’re in year two of the RPI and the OHSAA still locks in seeding with two weeks before the tournament starts. There are literally ZERO good reasons why that makes sense. Absolutely none.
We’ve long had the technology to figure out a team’s record and RPI at any given moment. Set a hard deadline where teams can no longer play any regular season games, total everything up, and finalize the seeding the Sunday of the week the tournament starts.
You’ve already seen this year and last cases where teams are manipulating the broken system. Pushing games back after the tournament draw if they think it will hurt their seeding. Some will claim too many kids out sick, others will downright admit they’re doing it to not hurt their seeding.
I can’t imagine any other sport, at any level of competition, where the last two weeks are completely pointless except for the very few who are trying to claim bragging rights of a conference title or rivalry game.
There’s nothing at all stopping the OHSAA from doing this. Should’ve been done the first year RPI was introduced, but in the famous words of Mr. Ute, “You gotta jump in the shallow end before you can get to the deep end.” No, do it right from the beginning or don’t do it at all.