The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Voting for seeding among adjustments
District tournament brackets to be filled Feb. 7
As the regular season enters its final weeks, teams start turning their attention to the postseason. This year’s boys basketball tournament is going to be different as coaches this season have to rank more teams rather than being placed into a district.
After the teams are ranked, they will get to select one of three brackets to be in, and selection order will be determined by the rankings. The higher-seeded team will play host to that round’s matchups.
The amount of teams varies per division. For example, coaches for Division I in Northeast Ohio have to rank 37 teams, while teams in Division III have to rank 24. Previous districts featured roughly 12 or 13 teams. But with the COVID-19 pandemic, it was decided that this season’s district matchups would follow a bubble type of format. This type of format has advantages and disadvantages, Chagrin Falls coach Dave Bargar said.
“In traditional districts, you usually had some sort of history with most of the teams — whether they were on your schedule or you played common opponents or you had a good idea of what kind of program they have,” said Bargar. “This year, there are many teams that probably have never crossed paths or coaches that don’t have any knowledge about other programs. I hope that everyone does their homework to get the teams seeded as accurately as possible.”
In a normal season, ranking teams wouldn’t be as difficult for coaches.
But many teams have been affected by COVID-19. Last week, a handful of area teams had to pause their season. This has caused a varying amount of games played by teams. An example is that Riverside has played 14 games, while Chagrin Falls has played eight. Bargar believes seeding will be affected based on the amount of games that some teams have played.
“I don’t think there’s any question that seeding will be influenced for teams based on how many games they did or did not play,” said Bargar. “It is going to be very challenging for coaches to balance the differences between teams that have a wide gap of games played.”
Riverside coach Matt Grendel and Fairport coach Anton Verbec said extended shutdowns add to the difficulty.
“This has been a challenging year for every team. But even more so for those teams who have been shut down for extended periods of time,” said Grendel. “There are many teams with a limited amount of games played. So when it comes to seeding, there might not be significant background information on some teams. However, I will take into account how the team performed in their limited games when determining seeding.”
Added Verbec: “You don’t know what a team is capable of with so many days off. A lot more attention will go to head-to-head matchups and watching film of those teams that haven’t played a lot of games.”
While games have been canceled or postponed due to COVID-19, other teams
have been adding games to replace canceled ones. This has led to schedules being changed at the last minute, and coaches need to keep up with the schedule changes to have the most accurate possible rankings. Grendel said that while his team is one of those teams that have added games due to cancelations, it won’t affect his rankings.
“We have also had to add games constantly this year due to losing games because of other teams being shut down,” said Grendel. “This really won’t affect my idea of seeding because I will look at the games played by each team and how they did in those games.”
With the constant schedule changes and the starting and pausing of teams, that makes keeping track of teams more difficult.
One of the benefits of being the higher-seeded team is hosting at least one game during the sectionaldistrict portion of the postseason. Some coaches, like Mentor’s Bob Krizancic value the home court.
“It’s huge and we love playing on our home court,” said Krizancic. “This has been a point of emphasis to our players and we want to do what we can to ensure that we have that advantage.”
Other coaches follow the mindset of Beachwood coach David Krasnow. Krasnow’s team has had to pause its season twice, and had trouble finding a rhythm. Yet despite that, they are prepared to play anyone.
“If we find a rhythm, I will play anyone, anywhere, anytime. My greater issue is our safety and playing games. We have not had a chance to develop an identity at all. Every game feels like our first scrimmage.”
The tournament draw is on Feb. 7.