Changes to Girls Basketball that you would like to see for the 2021-2022 Season?

Yappi

Go Buckeyes
What changes would you like to see made by the OHSAA for Girls Basketball for the 2021-2022 season?
 
 
I would like to see rotating state tournament locations. I liked it in Dayton. But I think it would be great to have it one year in Toledo and the next in Cincinnati and then Columbus, Athens, Cleveland, etc.

As most of the tournaments are now in Columbus, Central Ohio area teams have an advantage with, typically, no travel. Same with, recently, Canton and Massillon for football. I think Dayton has some sports as well.

But that give advantages to the teams that are close by. Moving the tournaments around would rotate the advantages. It would also help local businesses and hotels in the host cities.
 
Probably nothing within their purview. Separation between haves and have-nots seems to be widening and killing the sport. Perception or reality?

Girls basketball I think the competitive gap between teams in various leagues and in the tournament is much more noticeable than boys.

To me, it usually seems like the middle of the road or average type teams are a much narrower niche on the girl's side.
 
With today's technology - it is really silly for the OHSAA to take the easiest approach and let each district board choose the format for their tournaments. The OHSAA needs to do better here......

None of us like the person who complains but has no solutions - so here are mine:

1. There were a large number of articles and social media threads this year that detailed how coaches (I think this is an annual occurrence) tried blatantly screwing other teams with the tournament seeding. Personally - I don't think that there is anything worse than an adult who tries to screw over kids. TAKE THE POWER AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE! Does March Madness have Coach K and Roy Williams and Bill Self and Geno and Jeff Walz sitting around a table voting for where their teams should be seeded?! What about the NFL post-season? I don't think that Bill Belichek and Andy Reid get together for coffee to discuss how the bracket looks.

One of the most widely-praised playoff systems in the entire country is the Harbin points system that the OHSAA uses for the football playoffs. USE IT FOR BASKETBALL!

By going to computer points - you allow everyone to play who they want - but earn points by winning games and also through the secondary points process - if the teams that you beat win games. This eliminates the whole "our strength of schedule merits this seed" debate. If your strength of schedule is really that tough - you should have no problem if you EARNED the 4 seed instead of a 2 seed who beat crappy teams all year. This also eliminates conference bias.

If the OHSAA is going to allow schools to have home court advantage throughout a district tournament - there is no way in heck that coaches should be determining the seeds. This is as much of an unfair disadvantage as you can possibly have - trying to run a neutral tournament.

Which brings me to my next point.....

2. When I speak of a uniform approach to the state tournament - everyone needs to have home games or nobody has home games.

It's really simple - we either have neutral sites or not. If the state and district boards cannot find enough neutral sites for the entire state - then we can go to a home court system through the districts.

IF everyone goes to a home court system - I will repeat - WE NEED A NEUTRAL WAY TO DETERMINE THE SEEDS (and subsequently the home court sites).

3. Not only does the state need to decide if we are going to have home courts or not......I would encourage them to open up blended/super districts across the state. This is the best way to get the best teams playing as far as possible in the tournament. There are some stacked districts in Ohio and there are some terrible districts. Allow everyone that is going to the same regional to choose which district tournament they want to go to.

Frankly - the administrators that prevent this from happening are being extremely selfish - once again, punishing the kids.

You're telling me that there are teams that have to drive over 3 hours for a "regional" football game - but admins are worried about a 90 minute to 2 hour drive for a district basketball game (when other districts already have teams making this drive)? I have a solution - if your team is a low seed and doesn't want to make a drive for a basketball playoff game - opt out of the tournament.

Otherwise - stop it.

If sectional championship games are more competitive than regional semi-finals and regional finals in certain regions - the system is broken. Open up the bracket placement process. (This is another reason why I think computer points would be beneficial - when you need to seed more teams, this is a fair way to do it).
 
With today's technology - it is really silly for the OHSAA to take the easiest approach and let each district board choose the format for their tournaments. The OHSAA needs to do better here......

None of us like the person who complains but has no solutions - so here are mine:

1. There were a large number of articles and social media threads this year that detailed how coaches (I think this is an annual occurrence) tried blatantly screwing other teams with the tournament seeding. Personally - I don't think that there is anything worse than an adult who tries to screw over kids. TAKE THE POWER AWAY FROM THESE PEOPLE! Does March Madness have Coach K and Roy Williams and Bill Self and Geno and Jeff Walz sitting around a table voting for where their teams should be seeded?! What about the NFL post-season? I don't think that Bill Belichek and Andy Reid get together for coffee to discuss how the bracket looks.

One of the most widely-praised playoff systems in the entire country is the Harbin points system that the OHSAA uses for the football playoffs. USE IT FOR BASKETBALL!

By going to computer points - you allow everyone to play who they want - but earn points by winning games and also through the secondary points process - if the teams that you beat win games. This eliminates the whole "our strength of schedule merits this seed" debate. If your strength of schedule is really that tough - you should have no problem if you EARNED the 4 seed instead of a 2 seed who beat crappy teams all year. This also eliminates conference bias.

If the OHSAA is going to allow schools to have home court advantage throughout a district tournament - there is no way in heck that coaches should be determining the seeds. This is as much of an unfair disadvantage as you can possibly have - trying to run a neutral tournament.

Which brings me to my next point.....

2. When I speak of a uniform approach to the state tournament - everyone needs to have home games or nobody has home games.

It's really simple - we either have neutral sites or not. If the state and district boards cannot find enough neutral sites for the entire state - then we can go to a home court system through the districts.

IF everyone goes to a home court system - I will repeat - WE NEED A NEUTRAL WAY TO DETERMINE THE SEEDS (and subsequently the home court sites).

3. Not only does the state need to decide if we are going to have home courts or not......I would encourage them to open up blended/super districts across the state. This is the best way to get the best teams playing as far as possible in the tournament. There are some stacked districts in Ohio and there are some terrible districts. Allow everyone that is going to the same regional to choose which district tournament they want to go to.

Frankly - the administrators that prevent this from happening are being extremely selfish - once again, punishing the kids.

You're telling me that there are teams that have to drive over 3 hours for a "regional" football game - but admins are worried about a 90 minute to 2 hour drive for a district basketball game (when other districts already have teams making this drive)? I have a solution - if your team is a low seed and doesn't want to make a drive for a basketball playoff game - opt out of the tournament.

Otherwise - stop it.

If sectional championship games are more competitive than regional semi-finals and regional finals in certain regions - the system is broken. Open up the bracket placement process. (This is another reason why I think computer points would be beneficial - when you need to seed more teams, this is a fair way to do it).

Excellent post and provides alot of food for thought.

I think the onus of having home site early round games are simply because fewer and fewer locations want to host tournaments. Not sure you can ever rectify that problem. The computer points system seems to be a fair way to determine seeds, rather than coaches haggling it out. I'm all for teams being able to schedule according to their strength. Sometimes I wish conferences could be done away with and everyone could play an independent schedule. The disparity of the scores for high school girls games are getting worse and worse.

Got to watch all 4 championship games on Saturday and I'm so happy the kids were able to complete seasons this year.
 
eastisbest said:
Probably nothing within their purview. Separation between haves and have-nots seems to be widening and killing the sport. Perception or reality?
School size definitely shouldnt be the only determinite.

Determinant between.....? I'm thinking you read something into my post I hadn't intended or I'm missing the point you're making. I'm not sure what you're stating.
 
One thing that I would like to see with home court tournament games. The team on the top of the bracket is the home team...ALWAYS.

I'm tired of seeing top seeds take a first round game and playing a low rated team at home and then rewarded with a second round game at home against another low rated team.

The home team should be based on spot on the bracket. First round game plays into a game against a team that got a bye, the second round game should be at the home court of the team that took the bye. No more rewarding #1 seeds for bypassing the bye in favor of another blowout.

Take the highest spot on the bracket if you want to be the home team guaranteed.
 
Determinant between.....? I'm thinking you read something into my post I hadn't intended or I'm missing the point you're making. I'm not sure what you're stating.
Just stating the 'haves' might be big or small. 'Have nots' might be big or small. Toledo City Leagues are generally big. But they would get smashed against MAC schools. Thus size shouldnt be the only determinate for divisions.
 
One thing that I would like to see with home court tournament games. The team on the top of the bracket is the home team...ALWAYS.

I'm tired of seeing top seeds take a first round game and playing a low rated team at home and then rewarded with a second round game at home against another low rated team.

The home team should be based on spot on the bracket. First round game plays into a game against a team that got a bye, the second round game should be at the home court of the team that took the bye. No more rewarding #1 seeds for bypassing the bye in favor of another blowout.

Take the highest spot on the bracket if you want to be the home team guaranteed.
I was wondering how that worked. There were several high seeds crushing a low seed to play a team that had a bye-- which was another low seed. #1 seeds can pick that? That seems crazy to me.
 
Just stating the 'haves' might be big or small. 'Have nots' might be big or small. Toledo City Leagues are generally big. But they would get smashed against MAC schools. Thus size shouldnt be the only determinate for divisions.
Ah, Hard to come up with an alternative but I agree. If they want the sport to grow to it's potential, at least for awhile they'd benefit from a more dynamic way even to schedule the in-season so kids can actually compete. As is, it's get on the bus or get run over by the bus and not everyone can afford a ticket. I wonder what kind of crazy scheme I can come up with?
 
I was wondering how that worked. There were several high seeds crushing a low seed to play a team that had a bye-- which was another low seed. #1 seeds can pick that? That seems crazy to me.

Yeah but the advantage is, that upper talent team's fans will actually pay to see that crushing at home. No one goes to a neutral site to see it, not even the crushers. If the weaker teams are getting into tournament, then bills got to be paid.
 
I agree with most of the suggestions. The home court based on seeding needs to go. We have had it for first round games for a few years here in Central Ohio. Hard to believe we couldn't get one or two schools to open up their beautiful facilities (built by taxpayers) to host a Saturday all day marathon of first round games.

Seeding by the coaches compounds the home court issue. My question is who would be knowledgeable enough to do the seeding? IMO the Harbin points system to seed teams could work. Also, allow non-competive schools to opt out and play a game like the Westland and Cols West coaches did this year.
 
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One thing that I would like to see with home court tournament games. The team on the top of the bracket is the home team...ALWAYS.

I'm tired of seeing top seeds take a first round game and playing a low rated team at home and then rewarded with a second round game at home against another low rated team.

The home team should be based on spot on the bracket. First round game plays into a game against a team that got a bye, the second round game should be at the home court of the team that took the bye. No more rewarding #1 seeds for bypassing the bye in favor of another blowout.

Take the highest spot on the bracket if you want to be the home team guaranteed.

Disagree... the team that has the higher seed earned the right to have the home game.
 
The #1 seed picks first... they aren't "picking" that, it's just how it works out because other teams avoid playing the top seed. It is what it is. Don't want to be stuck in one of those games? Win enough that you aren't a bottom seed? *shrug*

I was wondering how that worked. There were several high seeds crushing a low seed to play a team that had a bye-- which was another low seed. #1 seeds can pick that? That seems crazy to me.
 
Disagree... the team that has the higher seed earned the right to have the home game.
With my idea, you earned the right to have the home game. Just pick the proper spot on the bracket. If you want to forfeit that earned right, pick another spot on the bracket.

No sense in rewarding a team twice by giving them two home games in a row when they bypass a bye. We need to stop rewarding teams choosing to play overwhelmed teams back to back if we can avoid it.
 
There's no proper spots on brackets though... any spot that's open is a 'proper' spot. Teams don't want a long break between games. That's their RIGHT as the top seed to choose their path.... and the playing those teams is the reward for winning in the season. You think the top team should have tough games in the early rounds? That's ludicrous.
 
Not sure it solves the problem of disparity but I have heard there is talk of a super size division like football has. The top 75 or so schools in enrollment make up that division then evenly split the rest among 3 divisions. I think that the competitive balance weight should be really high so that it moves a school up one or two divisions.
 
There's no proper spots on brackets though... any spot that's open is a 'proper' spot. Teams don't want a long break between games. That's their RIGHT as the top seed to choose their path.... and the playing those teams is the reward for winning in the season. You think the top team should have tough games in the early rounds? That's ludicrous.
I don't think that's what he is proposing at all. He is just wanting the #1 seed to actually take the top spot in the bracket. This wouldn't lead to them having harder early games necessarily. It would just eliminate teams having 3 consecutive 100-0 type games in a row and replace it with a 70-25 type game or two.
 
I don't know where you're from but the 100-0 games don't happen around here ... and blowouts in early rounds are to be expected. You earn the right to have an easier early tournament path by winning games during the season. This obsession over taking the bye/not taking it is ridiculous.
 
There's no proper spots on brackets though... any spot that's open is a 'proper' spot. Teams don't want a long break between games. That's their RIGHT as the top seed to choose their path.... and the playing those teams is the reward for winning in the season. You think the top team should have tough games in the early rounds? That's ludicrous.
I am not a basketball coach but coach a different women's sport in the state of Ohio. When it came to picking a spot, my staff and myself would talk about the benefits of taking a bye vs playing a fist round game and avoiding a long layoff. Most of the time if you take a first round by you could be looking at close to two weeks with no games. If possible we always looked to play in the first round to avoid rust and it keeps our team in the same rhythm we had for the whole season. That is one of the benefits of winning games and being looked at as a top team by your peers and voted as such. Now if we could get rid of the coaches vote for seeding or have it play a part in the seeding that would be the best thing to happen in women's athletics across the board. There have been plenty of times that I have seen coaches from parts of a district that voted teams with losing records from their conference higher then teams with winning records in a better conference. That is the part that OHSAA needs to fix, some coaches don't do the research and just vote on records or along conference lines and it throws a wrench in the seeding.
 
I don't know where you're from but the 100-0 games don't happen around here ... and blowouts in early rounds are to be expected. You earn the right to have an easier early tournament path by winning games during the season. This obsession over taking the bye/not taking it is ridiculous.
I don't really care what the top seed does. I was just trying to explain what the proposal was. As for 100-0 type games, I was using that as a metaphor for games where one team is guaranteed to win.
 
I am not a basketball coach but coach a different women's sport in the state of Ohio. When it came to picking a spot, my staff and myself would talk about the benefits of taking a bye vs playing a fist round game and avoiding a long layoff. Most of the time if you take a first round by you could be looking at close to two weeks with no games. If possible we always looked to play in the first round to avoid rust and it keeps our team in the same rhythm we had for the whole season. That is one of the benefits of winning games and being looked at as a top team by your peers and voted as such. Now if we could get rid of the coaches vote for seeding or have it play a part in the seeding that would be the best thing to happen in women's athletics across the board. There have been plenty of times that I have seen coaches from parts of a district that voted teams with losing records from their conference higher then teams with winning records in a better conference. That is the part that OHSAA needs to fix, some coaches don't do the research and just vote on records or along conference lines and it throws a wrench in the seeding.

This really isn’t hard - computer points
 
This really isn’t hard - computer points
I think it should not be just computer points, if memory serves me the old BCS system of college football was computer based but it figured in both the coaches and AP poll in to the equation. I think coaches should still have a part in voting but should not be the only factor that applies to seeding in any sport.
 
The Harbin style system wouldn't be bad but that's a lot more complicated when it's 22 games than 10. I do agree that straight coaches' voting isn't working well.
 
There's no proper spots on brackets though... any spot that's open is a 'proper' spot. Teams don't want a long break between games. That's their RIGHT as the top seed to choose their path.... and the playing those teams is the reward for winning in the season. You think the top team should have tough games in the early rounds? That's ludicrous.
Totally disagree. A bye is by definition the easiest game they could play. The proper spot on a bracket is created when the brackets are first made. Played in plenty of tournaments in many sports that say the top line is the home team. Very simple fix for HS sports.

Win the first seed and you get the easiest path to a the third round. Start with a bye and play the lowest seed in the second round. That is a huge reward and plenty for any team in Ohio. No need to lineup the two lowest seeds and get a home court for both so we can see 80-20 scores two rounds in a row.

Maybe we could just go to straight seeding and not let the teams pick their spots at all. That would fix the first round meaningless blowouts that could easily be avoided.
 
Win the first seed and you get the easiest path to a the third round. Start with a bye and play the lowest seed in the second round. That is a huge reward and plenty for any team in Ohio.

You are applying the professional and college mindset to the high school game with that "reward".

Coaches are creatures of habit. They hate change. They try (for the most part) to do anything they can to as best simulate the regular season practice/game cycles as far as they can into the tournament. There aren't many coaches that view 12-14 days of down time (practice only) as a good thing.

Something else to consider.......Many use the first game(s) as a reward for the players that haven't played as much during the regular season. I've worked plenty a contest where the starting 5 don't see the floor and many times where the starters don't even dress. (allows some JV players to suit up and get some live action during the tourney)
 
I understand why coaches want to play that game. It makes sense. But the biggest complaint about girls basketball is the lopsided scores. Letting a #1 seed play a #13 and then #12 seed in the first two rounds at home highlights these lopsided scores.

I know some consider this a punishment to the top seed but I believe this would make the game even better. One low seed could beat another low seed and consider their season a little more successful before they get beaten down by the juggernaut.
 
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