Starting a new chapter
Seeded state tourney ready to make its debut
One day you’re coaching for a berth in the state tournament, the next you’re campaigning for your team.
That was life Sunday for the 20 girls basketball coaches around the state who led their teams to sectional titles last weekend.
Coaches in other sports have been seeding their state tournaments for years, but this marks the first season it will be done for basketball.
I imagine for a coach that it was an awkward spot to be. Just days before you take the court at state, you have to explain to your peers why your team should be regarded ahead of others. And since basketball coaches seeded the entire field rather than just the top half, one school received the chip for its shoulder that comes with being the lowest seed.
You’ve got to tread lightly. Who wants to provide the opposition any extra inspiration at this point in the year.
“This year it was an interesting process, I’ll say that,” Oak Creek coach Steve Hluchnik said.
I’m for seeding. Who isn’t? If the goal of a tournament is to determine the best team, then shouldn’t the best teams have the greatest chance of advancing the farthest.
Seeding is a great tool to have in that regard, even in years when the process is like splitting hairs.
That was certainly the case in Divi-
sion 1 this year. How do you distinguish between Appleton North, a defending champion with four returning starters, Mukwonago, which was ranked No. 1 in the state media and coaches polls, Arrowhead, which has had just one loss since the first game of the season and Oak Creek, which reached the state tournament by defeating a Milwaukee King squad that beat Mukwonago and North this season?
That tangled web of connections could have been sorted out a handful of ways.
“I don’t know if the Division 1 group really needed a seeding format this year. I think you’ve got four teams that are very good, well coached that are about the same,”’ Hluchnik said. “There were a lot of coaches arguing for their teams and I think you could actually pulled all of out of a hat and went one through four.”
Of course, that’s not always the case. Last year Appleton North and Milwaukee King, considered the top two teams in the state, met in the semifinals.
King just missed making a second straight trip to state this year, but it still had a hand in settling the pecking order of the most balanced bracket of the five divisions.
“They had a fantastic team this year and they had the most difficult schedule in the state,” Arrowhead coach Rick Witte said of King. “Nobody can argue that. Milwaukee King was the common opponent we all played and we just happened to dismantle King, 83-60, and I think they look to that and that is what we’re supposed to speak to. That was tough to argue against.”
The other of the brackets involving area teams came out as expected.
In Division 2, the seeding went Beaver Dam, Monroe, New Berlin Eisenhower and Hortonville, a pecking order that was, for the most part, neatly arranged thanks to head-to-head matchups.
In Division 3, St. Thomas More is seeded behind two 25-1 schools, Marshall and Amherst but is placed ahead of 25-1 Wisconsin Dells, a credit perhaps to the Cavaliers tough schedule and / or the success of the Metro Classic at state the past couple of years.
“I’m glad they’re trying something. I think it’s the right idea,” Beaver Dam coach Tim Chase said. “I’d prefer they do it at the sectional level actually because sometimes I think sectionals get loaded. A team like Milwaukee Vincent is a perfect example, a team that has been in the top five most off the year and they have a game in the Sweet 16 where we’re playing each other.”
If Chase had his way, those teams would have been re-seeded after regionals and that matchup would have taken place in the sectional final rather than the sectional semifinal.
Ideally that is how things work. The teams with the better seeds advance farther in the tournament. That is the goal with seeding the tournament. Time will tell if it makes any difference.
“One of the things that sometimes happens when you go to state is a lot of teams get hot and you never know who is going to be good at the time,” Eisenhower coach Gary Schmidt said. “Sometimes you have to discard records … You never know when you go to state and there are four teams left.”