Right now, how do you feel about the association controlling the pairings?
- Thread starter LukeFeddersen
- Start date
I think it is horribly wrong. The "pairings" look fine now, but there can only be questions moving forward when it is left in the hands of Boone. It goes against sports tradition not to build a bracket and play the bracket. I think it leaves Boone open to making mistakes with their decisions (see DSM East v Ames game, poor gut decision) and ultimately will lead all of us to question their motives. You build the brackets using as many metrics as possible to take the human element out of the process and let the competition play out.
Chalk me up as another one that hates it as well! Teams and coaches no longer can plan and scout ahead since they have no clue who they'll be playing in 2nd and 3rd rounds. We need to go back to the bracket, and to that end, go back to the point system. Furthermore, in Eastern Iowa in particular, they need to go down to just 3 districts. Having 4 districts for just 22 teams is patently absurd! It's bad enough having only 5 games that count for the six 6-team districts, but then Eastern Iowa has two 5-team districts, thus only 4 games count! The smaller classes have more teams...1A thru 3A has 56 teams, or 7 teams per district, while Class A has 64 teams, or 8 teams per district. There is no reason for there to be 4 districts in Eastern Iowa, and I don't even think there should be 4 in Western Iowa either. But at the same time, I understand their need for greater travel flexibility on that side of the state. At least if you go down to 3 in Eastern Iowa, you have an 8-team, and two 7-team districts, while Western Iowa would have three 8-team districts. I'm sorry, but 4 and 5 games is an insufficient sample size for determining qualified playoff participants! We don't want to be like Indiana and marginalize our regular season like they do.
When you think about it, how is Districts different from Conference play. The only difference in 4A is you have 4A teams playing down a class. They should be on the point system and let Screwloose do all the hard work for them. People are forgetting why Districts was set up in the 1st place.
1) It was hard for teams in the smaller classes to schedule games. From 1989-1991 at the 4A level it was hard for the old Big 8 to schedule a full 9 game slate, in those years West, East and Cedar Falls for sure played at least two teams from another state.
2) Districts was also set up to minimize travel.
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1) That issue has not been a problem from 1992-2013 at the 4A level, now teams a playing games against teams twice the distance then they played last year.
2) See the Comment above, they have just screwed things up.
1) It was hard for teams in the smaller classes to schedule games. From 1989-1991 at the 4A level it was hard for the old Big 8 to schedule a full 9 game slate, in those years West, East and Cedar Falls for sure played at least two teams from another state.
2) Districts was also set up to minimize travel.
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1) That issue has not been a problem from 1992-2013 at the 4A level, now teams a playing games against teams twice the distance then they played last year.
2) See the Comment above, they have just screwed things up.
The bracketed playoff tree has only been around in Iowa since the expansion to 32 teams in 2008. Coaches had to wait to find out their next opponent for 20+ years in the 16-team days. I trust that staffs can look at a map & figure out their most likely opponent next round.
Posted from Rivals Mobile
Posted from Rivals Mobile
I don't really mind it! The one thing I would like to see is teams that
don't finish over 500 overall on the season should not make the
playoffs. I know they may have a tough non district schedule or tough
district but to have 2,3, even 4 win teams in instead of some 5 win
teams seems somewhat wrong. It may be mean some districts don't get the
same amount of teams but to me you should have to have a winning record.
It is the postseason for a reason and I think you need to earn it (Good
Life Lesson). May mean odd number of teams but then reward the teams
that go undefeated and so forth. It could be done! I also think it
should be the same in all other sports as well such as basketball and
baseball. I know the one thing that people in Boone would say is that
will lower ticket sales but if you are putting the better and best teams
in you would think you would get bigger crowds and gather more
interest. Just my thoughts.
don't finish over 500 overall on the season should not make the
playoffs. I know they may have a tough non district schedule or tough
district but to have 2,3, even 4 win teams in instead of some 5 win
teams seems somewhat wrong. It may be mean some districts don't get the
same amount of teams but to me you should have to have a winning record.
It is the postseason for a reason and I think you need to earn it (Good
Life Lesson). May mean odd number of teams but then reward the teams
that go undefeated and so forth. It could be done! I also think it
should be the same in all other sports as well such as basketball and
baseball. I know the one thing that people in Boone would say is that
will lower ticket sales but if you are putting the better and best teams
in you would think you would get bigger crowds and gather more
interest. Just my thoughts.
I think what bothers me most is that they said they would "attempt to avoid rematches". They did a decent job of that in 4A, but if you look at class A the western side of the state is almost strictly back in their own districts. Then in 1A you have some long travel times to avoid rematches, but then again in 3A you have Heelan's district playing each other all over again... IAHSAA did like a Jekyll and Hyde thing when it came to avoiding rematches and it varied far too much by class.
I know I'm a SC East fan and all, but D2 was a nasty district this year... I know there are no "good" match-ups for a 4 seed, but Ankeny would've been a better draw than Waukee. Johnston getting Centennial rather than Urbandale is disappointing as well from a D2 perspective. If I recall the point thread that screwloose put together a week or so ago, D2 would've been sitting with all 4 qualifiers no worse than #9 seed. That would've been a lot more indicative of what they had to go through in district play.
I know I'm a SC East fan and all, but D2 was a nasty district this year... I know there are no "good" match-ups for a 4 seed, but Ankeny would've been a better draw than Waukee. Johnston getting Centennial rather than Urbandale is disappointing as well from a D2 perspective. If I recall the point thread that screwloose put together a week or so ago, D2 would've been sitting with all 4 qualifiers no worse than #9 seed. That would've been a lot more indicative of what they had to go through in district play.
In western (and especially northwest) Iowa, there simply weren't non-district qualifiers within 125 miles of each other in some of those classes.
Central Lyon's nearest non-district opponent would be East Sac County (134 miles).
West Lyon: Lake Mills (159) or Underwood (163).
Akron could go to Logan, but Griswold to Moville is over 130. So that's out.
Westwood could go to South O'Brien, but Hawarden to Audubon is 150+.
District rematches in 1st round:
4A - 0
3A - 2
2A - 4
1A - 1
A - 5
8P - 1
13 of 96 games on Wednesday will be district rematches.
So it was essentially my area that held most of the district rematches, which is probably why it looked like a lot to me... Both 3A district rematches are in Siouxland (SBL vs BHRV and Heelan vs Spencer).
SC East is traveling 180+ miles, so some of those travel distances don't seem all that bad to me....
I'm at a wait and see right now. If they truly reshuffle the bracket every round and re-seed so that One Plays four and two plays three in the semi's so that we may have two east side teams or two west side teams but either way the best two teams meet in the finals instead of the sami's then I'm all for this new format. We'll see if they actually do that though that remains to be seen.
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