The 3A and 4A substate pairings come out in a few days. A lot of us on this board (parents of players, fans (mostly), coaches and former players) think that strength of schedule should play a prominent role in selecting pairings for the upcoming districts and substates. Personally (and some may disagree) I think that the BC Moore power rankings are the most accurate of the rankings (or at least should share equal significance with, say, the newspaper poll- and maybe they could be averaged). How about this idea? Take the top eight in each class and distribute them across the eight substates. Then take the next eight and reverse the order so that #16 is in a substate with #1, etc. Now, here is where geography should come in. You can't have Sergeant Bluff Luten paired against Assumption or Oskaloosa, but do your best. Maybe #1 is in the same substate as #13 or 14. Just do the fairest job you can. You could do the same for the next tier of eight teams, or maybe not. At least if you did this for the top 16 or 24 teams in each class, it would spread the best teams out and prevent Waukee and Ankeny Centennial or Dubuque Senior and Dub. Hempstead from meeting in district finals, for example. Nothing will ever be completely fair, and there is always an upstart team that catches fire at tournament time and runs over the favorites, but that's what makes the tourney fun. What do other posters think?
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