D1 Tournament Format

J

JBaller

Well-known member
Obviously, with the new breakdown in divisions, there are only 64 teams in Division 1 which lends itself pretty perfectly to a 64-team bracket. The OHSAA website says there will be 6 regional participants from the Southwest district, 6 from the Central district, and 4 from the Northeast district. It appears that Region 4 will feature 4 SW teams, Region 3 will feature 2 SW and 2 Central teams, Region 2 will feature 4 Central teams, and Region 1 will be 4 NE teams.

My question is this: how will the dynamics of the bracket work to determine, say, those 6 regional teams from the Southwest? By my count, there are 25 schools in the Southwest district in D1, with 18 from Cincinnati and 7 from Dayton (it actually works out to all 10 GMC schools, 3 out of the 4 GCL-S schools, 5 out of the 10 ECC schools, Western Hills, and 6 out of 8 GWOC schools). In the past, Dayton and Cincinnati would do separate draws to fill out 8 sectionals, with 5 from Cincinnati and 3 from Dayton, to determine the 4 district matchups and, eventually, the regional. For those 6 regional spots this year, the perfect balance would be 24 schools competing in 6 districts; however, Southwest has 25. Will one school get a bye? Will they send one of the Dayton teams to the Central district? Will Cincinnati and Dayton still have separate draws? I have not seen any update on the format here, so I'm wondering if anyone has ANY insight?
 
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JBaller said:
Obviously, with the new breakdown in divisions, there are only 64 teams in Division 1 which lends itself pretty perfectly to a 64-team bracket. The OHSAA website says there will be 6 regional participants from the Southwest district, 6 from the Central district, and 4 from the Northeast district. It appears that Region 4 will feature 4 SW teams, Region 3 will feature 2 SW and 2 Central teams, Region 2 will feature 4 Central teams, and Region 1 will be 4 NE teams.

My question is this: how will the dynamics of the bracket work to determine, say, those 6 regional teams from the Southwest? By my count, there are 25 schools in the Southwest district in D1, with 18 from Cincinnati and 7 from Dayton (it actually works out to all 10 GMC schools, 3 out of the 4 GCL-S schools, 5 out of the 10 ECC schools, and 7 out of 8 GWOC schools). In the past, Dayton and Cincinnati would do separate draws to fill out 8 sectionals, with 5 from Cincinnati and 3 from Dayton, to determine the 4 district matchups and, eventually, the regional. For those 6 regional spots this year, the perfect balance would be 24 schools competing in 6 districts; however, Southwest has 25. Will one school get a bye? Will they send one of the Dayton teams to the Central district? Will Cincinnati and Dayton still have separate draws? I have not seen any update on the format here, so I'm wondering if anyone has ANY insight?
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Looking at the fall brackets, my guess would be 9 two team "sectional" brackets in Cincy, 2 two team brackets in Dayton and 1 three team bracket in Dayton. Those 12 advance to districts and 6 winners move on to regionals.
 
SWOHHoops said:
Looking at the fall brackets, my guess would be 9 two team "sectional" brackets in Cincy, 2 two team brackets in Dayton and 1 three team bracket in Dayton. Those 12 advance to districts and 6 winners move on to regionals.
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If there are 64 teams, why would they not do a straight 64-team tournament (no byes)? That seemed to pretty much be one of the reasons why they wanted that in D1 and D2.
 
SWOHHoops said:
Looking at the fall brackets, my guess would be 9 two team "sectional" brackets in Cincy, 2 two team brackets in Dayton and 1 three team bracket in Dayton. Those 12 advance to districts and 6 winners move on to regionals.
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Also, I haven't seen any fall brackets yet for sports that should follow the same format in boys' and girls' soccer. Those brackets should come out this Sunday though, so we'll see what they look like.
 
SWOHHoops said:
Looking at the fall brackets, my guess would be 9 two team "sectional" brackets in Cincy, 2 two team brackets in Dayton and 1 three team bracket in Dayton. Those 12 advance to districts and 6 winners move on to regionals.
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From talking with some D1 coaches this new idea of only 64 in D1 does not make them happy. Looking at the athletic district boards there are 6. (Cent, NE, NW, SE, SW, East) Looking at the D1 number of schools from those areas we have Cent=22, NE=15 NW=2, SW=25 E=0SE=0.

If every bracket is clean, the Central District needs 24 teams to produce 6 regional qualifiers. NE District needs 16 teams get 4 and SW District needs 24 teams to get 6. That is how OHSAA wants the 16 Regional Teams produced. This will make some teams and fans have huge travel times for maybe a single game.
 
JBaller said:
If there are 64 teams, why would they not do a straight 64-team tournament (no byes)? That seemed to pretty much be one of the reasons why they wanted that in D1 and D2.
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Where does Perrysburg and Toledo Whitmer fit into your bracket? Do they drive to Columbus for a District Semi game or to Akron. Whitmer fans would surely love the idea of driving to Olentangy Liberty 130 miles one-way to play a district semi final game on a Wednesday school night.
 
spirit454 said:
Where does Perrysburg and Toledo Whitmer fit into your bracket? Do they drive to Columbus for a District Semi game or to Akron. Whitmer fans would surely love the idea of driving to Olentangy Liberty 130 miles one-way to play a district semi final game on a Wednesday school night.
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The 64-team tournament is certainly dumb. The approximately 200-team D1 tournament was pretty good. Heck, I would be in favor of ONE tournament like Kentucky, but you make the sectionals and districts VERY regional. There would be bragging rights to be the one true champion of Toledo or southeast Ohio, even if those teams didn't have much of a shot at state. However, the smaller D1 schools, who are now in D3, and pretty much got blasted in the 1st or 2nd round of the tournament every year, want their participation trophies and had to ruin it for everybody.
 
With both sports having 7 divisions, why didn't the OHSAA mirror the football layout with roughly the largest 10% in D1 and have the next 6 divisions be evenly divided.
 
spirit454 said:
With both sports having 7 divisions, why didn't the OHSAA mirror the football layout with roughly the largest 10% in D1 and have the next 6 divisions be evenly divided.
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They very specifically wanted 64 schools in D1 and D2. I have to think it's for the tournament format.
 
JBaller said:
They very specifically wanted 64 schools in D1 and D2. I have to think it's for the tournament format.
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I understand but those 64 can change each year and the fact that a team can be isolated and forced to travel 130 miles for their first tournament game is a bit much. Since football also has 7 divisions but are pre-season placed into 4 regions and play most post season games at neutral located sites. Basketball playoff games from District and after are played at locations to accommodate 3-6 games and do not always provide similar issues for teams.
I just think they could have increased the division numbers to make some happy but done it in a better way.
 
spirit454 said:
Where does Perrysburg and Toledo Whitmer fit into your bracket? Do they drive to Columbus for a District Semi game or to Akron. Whitmer fans would surely love the idea of driving to Olentangy Liberty 130 miles one-way to play a district semi final game on a Wednesday school night.
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Whitmer and Perrysburg have been thrown into the Northeast District.
JBaller said:
They very specifically wanted 64 schools in D1 and D2. I have to think it's for the tournament format.
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It was not about tournament format. There were some smaller D1's that had a great deal of influence in shaping the approved format.
 
spirit454 said:
With both sports having 7 divisions, why didn't the OHSAA mirror the football layout with roughly the largest 10% in D1 and have the next 6 divisions be evenly divided.
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The million dollar question.

It is crazy that the largest D2 schools from last year move "down" to D3 and will player BIGGER schools this year.
 
JBaller said:
Also, I haven't seen any fall brackets yet for sports that should follow the same format in boys' and girls' soccer. Those brackets should come out this Sunday though, so we'll see what they look like.
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All fall sport brackets are on the swdab website right now, will be populated with teams on Sunday.
 
SWOHHoops said:
All fall sport brackets are on the swdab website right now, will be populated with teams on Sunday.
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Ah, found them. The boys' soccer bracket works out perfectly with only 24 teams in Southwest, but the girls' soccer only had 21 going into 5. It's so dumb to have an unequal number of teams.
 
spirit454 said:
That would give the NE district 17 teams according to the numbers I saw.
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Exactly. Northeast has 17 going into 4 district winners. Southwest has 25 going into 6 district winners. Both districts will have to feature a play-in game. Central has 22 going into 6, so 2 teams are getting byes! Honestly, in such a smaller tournament now, that is a huge (and unfair) advantage.
 
JBaller said:
Exactly. Northeast has 17 going into 4 district winners. Southwest has 25 going into 6 district winners. Both districts will have to feature a play-in game. Central has 22 going into 6, so 2 teams are getting byes! Honestly, in such a smaller tournament now, that is a huge (and unfair) advantage.
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If I can imagine this correctly, two teams in the central district are in the District Finals right now.
 
As mentioned above in reference to oddly numbered districts... yes, there are weird matchups and teams moved.

For example; was it 10 years ago?? A Cincinnati team was always hsipped off to the columbus regional? That led to a St X moeller state final.

20+ years ago, I remember McNick playing Kewon Ratfliff and an another d1 football star head to the Gators from columbus whitmore maybe? at UD?

so expect a lot of possible travel for even district title games
 
Yappi said:
That just makes no sense. With 64 teams, it should be 16 four team districts. It really should be that simple.
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Two divisions limited to 64 teams each is what doesn't make sense.

The District Athletic Boards are responsible for conducting district tournaments. You would need a by-law change to make that happen.
 
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D1nwobb said:
Two divisions limited to 64 teams each is what doesn't make sense.
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Agreed. Amazing that two wrong decisions were made at the same time.

I'm OK with splitting into 7 divisions. I understand limiting D1 to a certain number of teams because of school size disparity. What doesn't make sense is D2 being a small, insulated division. The only takeaway is that these mid-size D1 schools wanted some easy trophies. Football does it the right way. Not sure why the OHSAA went away from that model and made these other sports use a mind-boggling system.

Arguably, D3 will be a tougher division than D2 in all the sports that adopted this new format. Much easier to beat out 64 teams than to beat out 130.
 
Volleyball looks to be the best comparison as they have 7 divisions like basketball. Below are links to the sectional brackets (7 for Cincy and 3 for Dayton) and the district brackets for volleyball. I would imagine basketball would follow suit but probably have 9 for Cincy (18 teams) and 3 for Dayton (7 teams).


 
aztecjim said:
I still don't understand why the OHSAA stays with the six governing districts when it comes to tournaments. In football they are ignored, why not all other sports?
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In the past those district boards controlled post season play for all sports until the regional level. Maybe the new leadership at the OHSAA feels that control should be limited or even eliminated.
 
JBaller said:
The 64-team tournament is certainly dumb. The approximately 200-team D1 tournament was pretty good. Heck, I would be in favor of ONE tournament like Kentucky, but you make the sectionals and districts VERY regional. There would be bragging rights to be the one true champion of Toledo or southeast Ohio, even if those teams didn't have much of a shot at state. However, the smaller D1 schools, who are now in D3, and pretty much got blasted in the 1st or 2nd round of the tournament every year, want their participation trophies and had to ruin it for everybody.
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So the smaller D1 schools should just be sacrificial lambs so that the big D1 schools can have a bigger tournament with more teams? How does that make sense? Teams should be grouped by similar enrollments. Not sure why the OHSAA insists on the same number of teams in every division? I would think there could be some mathmatical formula to determine the disparity between the smallest school in a division and the largest and just split teams accordingly.
 
aztecjim said:
I still don't understand why the OHSAA stays with the six governing districts when it comes to tournaments. In football they are ignored, why not all other sports?
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I’ve been asking that question for years. It’s exists only to make district board members feel important
 
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