CIAC releases divisions for 2019-20
There will be 24 teams in the CIAC Division I boys basketball state tournament for the upcoming 2019-20 season.
The CIAC officially released its brackets on Tuesday. Six new teams have entered the Division I tournament: Manchester, Glastonbury, Wilton, New Britain, Fairfield Warde and Greenwich. Two teams have dropped into Division II: Weaver and Holy Cross.
Waterford will get a chance to defend its title in Division II after moving up from Division III to II last season.
The same formula was used as last year. Teams were ranked 1-183 based on the past three seasons. It starts with an enrollment multiplier based on boys in grades 9-12.
Teams are assigned points based on its victories and the wins by teams it beat. Those point totals over the three-year period are then multiplied by an assigned number to each league so designated by the CIAC boys basketball committee.
The highest designated conferences remained the same: the CCC, SCC, FCIAC, SWC, NVL and independents with three points. The ECC is one point below, and the remaining conferences are two points below.
Additional points were added for success in state tournament from reaching the quarterfinals all the way up to winning a state championship. Success points are only awarded to those schools that have at least 25 male students from beyond its geographic district borders.
Four more teams were added to Division I to allow just eight first-round byes. There are 35 teams in Division II, 37 in Division III, 39 in Division IV and 48 in Division V. Other movement of note: Division III champion Farmington and finalist Amistad are in Division II. So is Division V champion Innovation.
Division IV winner New Canaan is now in Division III, along with fellow FCIAC team St. Joseph, which fell to New Canaan in last year’s semifinals.
To see the complete formula used and all of the divisions, visit GameTimeCT.com.
The girls have changed from four divisions to five. The CIAC said those divisions will be released in the fall. One big difference from the boys is the CIAC girls basketball committee decided for this upcoming season to fill out all five of the brackets with 32 teams.
Eleven teams that won fewer than 40 percent of its games qualified last year in the old four-division format.