Video replay to debut next month
NMAA giving it a go one year sooner than first planned
As New Mexico Activities Association board of directors meetings go, this one had a little bit for everyone.
To recap the three major headlines from Wednesday morning’s developments:
Centralization of state football championship games was brought up as a discussion item;
There will be a new state tournament format for volleyball, which has eliminated the pool-play portion of the event;
Late-game video reviews will be available, if need be, next month for the second week of state basketball.
BASKETBALL: While the NMAA last November said it would likely be 2020 before a system would be in place to review last-second shots for quarterfinal, semifinal and championship games, it will be ready for this year’s event.
The three venues for the second week — Dreamstyle Arena/the Pit, the Santa Ana Star Center in Rio Rancho, and Bernalillo High School — will have a fourth official on the floor, plus a monitor at the ready at the scorer’s table. So if there is a repeat of the Cleveland-Eldorado fiasco that marred last year’s boys large-school semifinal contest, the extra official can communicate with the TV crew doing the game to provide a replay.
But this will be a limited-use situation. It will only apply to last-second shots and to distinguish between a 2-point basket and a 3-point basket. Last year in the semis, Cleveland advanced to the state final by scoring on a putback that clearly came after the buzzer. The game should have gone to overtime.
“I’m very comfortable and optimistic with having replay at the games,” NMAA executive director Sally Marquez said.
Marquez said in the last 14 years, there has only been one situation that would have merited such a review, and that was last year’s Storm-Eagles contest.
“I’m happy for a lot of reasons,” Eldorado coach Roy Sanchez said. “It helps the game in all kinds of ways. And everyone wanted this.”
As a point of reference, the review system will not be utilized for a clock operator error, like the one that occurred in the 2012 final between Hope Christian’s boys and St. Michael’s. That mistake almost certainly cost the Huskies’ a championship.
VOLLEYBALL: The state tournament next November will adopt a format that Colorado just implemented last year. Its formal name is the Olympic Crossover Bracket.
There won’t be any more pool play (which sometimes resulted in the tournament’s overall top two seeds meeting in the quarterfinals), and everyone is guaranteed at least two, best-of-5 matches.
The fields will consist of 12 teams, same as it’s been. The top four seeds receive byes, seeds 5-12 battle it out. Same as it’s been.
But, while the first-round winners go up against the top four seeds, losers drop into what is called the Contenders’ Bracket, and can still advance to the semifinals from there.
Teams in the Winners’ Bracket will go into the other bracket if they lose before the semifinals. And once the semis are locked in, it is single elimination from there on out.
“It’s gonna be good,” longtime Rio Rancho coach Toby Manzanares said. “We thought about 16 teams, but it would have been single-elimination and it would have watered it down.”
Another new wrinkle for volleyball is that on championship Saturday, there will be multiple finals (with New Mexico’s five classifications stretched out over two time blocks) going on simultaneously at the Santa Ana Star Center.
FOOTBALL: Purely for discussion, there was talk of moving all of the state football finals to one location.
NMAA Associate Director Dusty Young referenced a recent survey that found schools were in favor of this 48-34. Breaking that down, the vote was 18-2 in favor of one location from central region (meaning Albuquerque, by and large) voters, and only 30-32 outside this area.
This item will continue to linger in this stage for the immediate future as more feedback is gathered.
DISTRICT TIES: There was much consternation last November when the nationally ranked La Cueva girls soccer team received a No. 8 seed for the Class 5A state tournament.
The low seed was due to the weaker (by comparison) résumé of Eldorado, which had a one-goal tiebreaking advantage over the Bears in the District 2-5A standings after the two finished tied for first place. La Cueva had the much stronger overall résumé, but Eldorado had to be seeded higher as the official district champion.
Starting next school year, however, new bylaw language for the NMAA — as is already the case with basketball — will give it the latitude to compare résumés of tied teams when seeding teams for state, based on existing criteria.