PREPS ALCOVE

Re-seeding process continues to be no-brainer that isn't getting implemented

Now Media Group

 The state-championship match in WIAA team wrestling will be perceived by many to take place Friday afternoon. The actual state championship match won't happen until a day later.

But when Hudson and Kaukauna meet in the quarterfinals, the two teams considered the two best in the state will square off. It's simple luck of the draw that their two sectionals have been paired together in the state series, and when the team's cadre of nine state-ranked wrestlers apiece hit the mats, they'll be competing with three other Division 1 matches taking place around them.

It's one of countless examples over the years of a WIAA layout that insists on pre-pairing sectionals instead of re-seeding at the state-tournament level. But amazingly, four years after the WIAA adopted a seeding measure for one sport, it still hasn't done so for others. It makes less sense with each passing season.

Surely, the winner between Kaukauna and Hudson could get upset in the second round, perhaps by Mukwonago, and nobody is guaranteeing that one will with a state title. The problem I have is that the second-place finisher at state is always awarded a commemorative trophy, and if that's going to happen in team sports, then the layout needs to make a better effort of making sure the second-best doesn't have to face the best prior to the final.

Test balloon

There's a reason why boys volleyball served as the ideal test balloon for state-tourney seeding when it began in 2012. The nature of the sport and the limited number of teams around the state meant it was likely all the teams could face each other at some point in the season, usually at the handful of tournaments that invite a large proportion of the state's squads.

The tight-knit community guaranteed that coaches already had a rapport with each other, and when the state-qualifying coaches put their heads together to drum up seeding (they rank top four and randomly assign the other four), it's not a very contentious arrangement.

Four tournaments into the process, it appears to be working great. The top seed gets the added benefit of playing earliest, meaning the most time to rest before a potential semifinal (and final, for that matter, should it advance).

So why hasn't it been extended to other sports?

An educated guess

In wrestling, all four quarters compete at the same time, followed by semifinals the same night, so we're not talking about an advantage as it relates to time. But if you're Mukwonago, you can't be disappointed with the setup. Granted, MHS would have to work past a Menomonee Falls squad that deserves to be at state, too, but if it passes that test, MHS gets Kaukauna or Hudson moments after they just finished competing against the other top team in the state.

Mukwonago beating Hudson or Kaukauna under any circumstances would be huge for the program. But given that Mukwonago is dangerous enough to pull it off, Kaukauna or Hudson will have to overcome a test that nobody else in the state has to endure.

Other sports may not offer the same overlap as boys volleyball. Certainly, wrestling doesn't – there's a chance Milwaukee-area teams will match up with an elite non-area team once or twice at a tournament, but not always with a dual-meet format. But the effort could be made, all the same. We continue to gain more and more information about state sports through advancing coaches association web sites and independent sites, which should at least give observers an idea of how to compare teams. Coaches, moreover, usually have a strong sense how good and how tested other teams have been around the state, especially as coaches associations become better at communicating state-wide. They should be allowed to seed things out.

In basketball, with the adoption of the five-division format, we now have four teams per division at state. Sure, they may come from four corners of Wisconsin. But what's better: simply leaving the semifinal pairings to random assignment or taking an educated guess? Does a program have the right to be upset that it was perhaps denied a chance at second place because the coach-selected seed turned out to be less favorable than a random assignment would have been? With only four teams to compare, the chances are pretty good that coaches would be able to create a fair set of seeds. And if it turns out we're splitting hairs too finely, then oh well, the semifinals were going to be competitive either way.

The issue could create a much deeper dig about the fairness of sectional assignments, which are created more than a year in advance. There are some obvious imbalances in that area, but geography and the schedule of choosing assignments so early make that a bigger can of worms. At state, teams have already established their resumes, and it's much easier to create a fair seeding, especially with zero considerations about travel and geography.

Beat the best

The typical retort goes: if you want to be the best, you have to beat everyone, anyway. That's entirely true. But what about the second-place team that gets to bring a trophy back to its case when a much better team never got a chance to face anyone but the eventual champion?

Like everyone else, I love upsets and Cinderella stories, but those stories exude a greater magic when the upset is legitimately pulled against a team favored to win. It's a bit of a letdown if two low seeds that qualify for state get to face off and two powerhouses meet in the other semifinal. Don't you have to admit, when you take home the second-place trophy, that you got a nice break?

The less convincing argument, in my mind, is still a decent one. Shouldn't the state-championship contest be the pinnacle moment of the season, not a postscript to an earlier match at state? Like I said, it may not work out that way – the lower-seeded team might beat the higher-seeded team, of course, and create the imbalance anyway. But that would be an earned outcome, not a product of the archaic scheduling mechanism.

Maybe the silver trophy doesn't matter to a lot of programs, and that's fine. Maybe the pairing process creates more opportunities for new blood each year in state championship matches, and while that idea can run contrary to the idea of letting the best competition face off, I can understand that view even if I disagree with it. But given the widespread information we have, the expanded length of the season in basketball to create more nonconference matchups, and the stronger communication options for coaches associations, I feel the time has come. Let's plant some seeds.