For obvious reasons, I only got to one basketball playoff game this year and really don’t see my seeing anymore games this season, which is something I’m not use to. But I am adapting.
I have followed the playoffs with other venues and two of the best have been Jeff Reinhart and Keith Schweigert from Lancasteronline. The others don’t like taking comments from fans and are slow to give you the action.
With that in mind (this is the second attempt to write this because I hit the wrong button during the first attempt), there needs to be some changes in the playoffs from the formats, to the sites, perhaps how you seed teams and how the teas get into the playoffs.
When I was younger in this business and even when I was a student at Columbia High School, you had to win a certain percentage of games to get in the playoffs. Back then, the Catholic schools had their own tournament and there weren’t the glut of private schools. There also wasn’t all of the classes.
So, it changed from having to win a certain percentage of games to letting everyone in to teams with wining records and to fill out the brackets, teams with under .500 records. Most of those teams are in the lower two classes, AA and A. Yes, there are some mis-matches, but those teams are only following the rules.
Should there be changes in how teams qualify for the playoffs? That’s a tough question because I’ve seen teams with losing records do well. Take the Columbia boys team this year. They won six or seven games, yet they battled three teams – Lancaster Catholic, Lancaster Mennonite and Reading Central Catholic, all teams that played in the finals tough. I also feel they were a couple of baskets away from wining 10-12 games.
I don’t want to turn this into a Catholic, public and private school debate, but certain ones should be playing up and others should be playing down.
Even with power rating system, some teams because they don’t play that tough of a schedule and get rewarded for that. So, there are no easy answers to changing that, but perhaps the “big” or “real” leagues like the L-L, York, Mid-Penn and Berks should be guaranteed berths, while the others, who still have trouble walking and chewing gum so to speak, must actually qualify. I don’t know.
I thought this was a down year for the L-L League, yet they ended up with three boys and a girls team in the finals, but didn’t win a title.
Of those teams from the L-L that played in the finals or will advance to the state playoffs (okay, I still can’t figure out why there is a week off), three could do well in the tournament – Mennonite girls, Catholic boys, who come out of the week and Hempfield. I would suspect the Eastern boys will go a long way too.
I did look at the PIAA pairings this a.m. Tough break for the Trinity boys – they win a district title and draw Strawberry Mansion. Mennonite boys fall in the finals and they get the winner of a play-in game. What’s wrong with that?
Also read a lot about the sites for the game. There’s something with that. I saw a consi game where Delone and Hanover had to go to Carlisle to play. Wow.
It appears schools aren’t allowing the games to be played at their schools. Did not see any games at L-L schools with huge gyms such as Garden Spot, CV, Warwick or McCaskey. Here’s a thought and they do it in other sports, why not through at least through the first two rounds award the higher seeds with a home game. It would be a reward and it would also help District Three with a problem of finding schools. Okay, you wouldn’t be able to play doubleheaders, but would be something to consider.
I like playing games in the big venues such as the Giant Center, but, why not save that arena for the finals. I saw a crowd shot the other night and I could count the fans on my hands and one foot. And if they want to use the big arena in Hershey, why not use the old arena as well.
But District Three has to be losing its shirts on playing so many games at the Giant Center, but I don’t know.
But I do think its time to tweak things a little and make the tournament that much better.
No comments:
Post a Comment