Fixing the MSHSAA playoffs - One approach to a fairer playoff system 3/17/2022

 Happy St. Patrick's Day to you.

We begin the final stretch of class four, five, and six boys and girls playoffs tonight and it seems like everyone is talking about the inequitable district assignments that leave some of the best teams out of the final eight or even, final sixteen.

What if we set up a play-off that was seeded based upon ratings?  I have a rating system but there are other mathematical systems that could be used also.  Let's start with class six, as an example of something that would get the top sixteen teams (or something close to that) in the final sixteen. 

First off, let's look at which teams were in the final sixteen (championship district games):

So what is the problem?  Well, two of the top ten teams are missing (North Kansas City and Lee's Summit) plus the #11, #13, #14, and #16 teams (Park Hill, Oak Park, Park Hill South, and Parkway West).  Instead, the final sixteen included #23 Eureka (they did upset PW West), #25 Francis Howell, #28 Hickman, and #29 Jackson. So about one-third of the best teams were excluded from the final sixteen.

I have listed all 63 of the class six teams by Gramps Braggin Rights ratings in the left table and organized those teams by their current district.   I do not want to throw out the districts but combine two to make a region so there would be four regions with 15 or 16 teams in each region (63 teams total).  The biggest problem with this setup is that, in district 8, MSHSAA has six of the top 14 teams in class six (Staley, Liberty, North Kansas City, Park Hill, Oak Park, and Park Hill South).  The district was stacked and totally unfairly aligned.  Both Staley and Liberty could be in the final four, but only one moved on in the current system to the 2022 sweet sixteen.

We currently have eight districts which I would divide into four regions, NE, SE, SW, and NW as shown below.  In the new regions, districts 1 and 2 are combined, 3 and 4, 5 and 6 and 7 and 8.  I ranked those sixteen teams in each region based on Gramps ratings.

Then, I seeded all sixteen teams with a standard #1 plays #16, #2 plays 15# etc:  In region 2, Chaminade received a bye since there were only 15 teams.  Teams would play off to a final four in each region and each region would have four teams represented in the state tournament.

In this example, I used the top four seeds to represent each region.  Of course, in real life, some lower seeds might make the final four for any region.  All of the sixteen teams would then be re-seeded for the state playoffs.

In this re-seeding, the top ten teams are represented.  The only missing teams in the top 16 rated teams are #11 Park Hill, #13 Oak Park, #14  Park Hill South.  # 17 Pattonville, #18 Raytown, and #23 Eureka would replace those top three missing teams and Eureka would also displace #19 through #22 (Ozark, Hazelwood Central, Joplin, and Lee's Summit West).  However, the current sweet sixteen is missing far more than the three teams I mentioned (as described above).

So now that the sixteen teams (four from each region) are selected, MSHSAA would re-seed all sixteen teams for the state tournament.

The final sixteen would meet in a classic three- or four-day tournament at a selected site.  The final sweet sixteen class six bracket would look something like this:

And the tournament could have a championship and consolation bracket so that these sixteen teams all played more than a one-and-out elimination.

Whadja Think?  

I like this format a whole lot better than what happened in district 8 this year and also in other districts and other classes.