Montana High School basketball tournament format

[BelgradeBobcat]

I don't know for sure what most other states do, but I think a lot of them have more of a single elimination format for their basketball tournaments.

Montana on the other hand has for as long as anyone can remember, utilized a double elimination format.

I heard Bozeman High coach Mike Cole on the radio say he could be talked into it either way. I guess I agree with him there.

The double elimination format keeps teams in the tourney longer-thus giving folks who have to travel large distances more incentive to follow their team to a distant venue.

But is it more fair to be one and done? Fairfield beat Cut Bank four times (2 in the regular season, once at District, once at Divisionals) before the State B tournament. As fate would have it, Fairfield ended up playing Cut Bank for a 5th time in the State championship game-guess what...Cut Bank won. So who is really the better team?

In a single elimination format Fairfield would have been done with Cut Bank, or the two teams may not have met up in the tournaments until state.

Just a thought for the day...

[SonomaCat]

I don't know for sure what most other states do, but I think a lot of them have more of a single elimination format for their basketball tournaments.

Montana on the other hand has for as long as anyone can remember, utilized a double elimination format.

I heard Bozeman High coach Mike Cole on the radio say he could be talked into it either way. I guess I agree with him there.

The double elimination format keeps teams in the tourney longer-thus giving folks who have to travel large distances more incentive to follow their team to a distant venue.

But is it more fair to be one and done? Fairfield beat Cut Bank four times (2 in the regular season, once at District, once at Divisionals) before the State B tournament. As fate would have it, Fairfield ended up playing Cut Bank for a 5th time in the State championship game-guess what...Cut Bank won. So who is really the better team?

In a single elimination format Fairfield would have been done with Cut Bank, or the two teams may not have met up in the tournaments until state.

Just a thought for the day...

So in a single elimination format, Cut Bank wouldn't have even gotten to state (and maybe not even out of districts), when clearly they were a very deserving team.

At the Class B and C level, I think the double elimination formats are crucial since so much is riding on getting second (or third or fourth in the divisions with fewer districts) and advancing to the next tournament. There is also a much wider range of talent in the smaller schools, so getting a bad draw can be much more unfair at that level than at the larger school levels where things are a bit more even.

At the AA level, they just as well go single elimination since they only have one tournament to worry about about and they have all played each other during the course of the year anyway, for the most part.

[Cat Grad]

I would propose merging AA and A into one classification and B and C into one classification; two divisions with single elimination. 13 schools and 24 or 25 schools is a joke! Even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while and the competition within the "big" schools has slowly eroded the quality of play since the elimination of the Big 32 to the point that our kids rarely receive major school recruitment. (Except the girls).

[BelgradeBobcat]

So in a single elimination format, Cut Bank wouldn't have even gotten to state (and maybe not even out of districts), when clearly they were a very deserving team.

I don't know how it would be bracketed-I suppose Cut Bank would have been out of the picture before State-which would have suited Fairfield just fine, but not necessarily. You would still end up with an 8 team State tournament-with presumeably 8 deserving teams. It is pretty rare for a Cut Bank-Fairfield situation, but I would think things could be setup to provide for two teams from a given region to make it to State.

I'm not necessarily opposed to our format. My senior year we made it to state via the consolation/challenge game-and we dang well felt like we deserved to be there! But have you ever tried to explain our format to someone from another state? You get a lot of blank stares and confused looks.

Sometimes it doesn't matter-in Class C this year Gardiner and Whitewater made it all the way to the championship game undefeated-both clearly the 2 best teams-now that's a state championship game! As for AA...why bother with a consolation bracket-who cares if you're number 3 out of 13?

[rtb]

I agree that AA and A should combined for basketball. I think that would keep things much more interesting. For sports like track, football, etc where numbers have a big impact it wouldn't be fair but in basketball I would love to see the Big 32 come back somehow.

[Cat Grad]

I think Havre and Great Falls Central both won football championships when they were combined; operative word is think But that would have been before many of your parents were born...oh well, and if memory serves me correctly, there was only a couple of B divisions and EVERYBODY else was C...(guess that's why the C kids usually kicked butt in the Meet of Champions

[Ian]

I would propose merging AA and A into one classification and B and C into one classification; two divisions with single elimination. 13 schools and 24 or 25 schools is a joke! Even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while and the competition within the "big" schools has slowly eroded the quality of play since the elimination of the Big 32 to the point that our kids rarely receive major school recruitment. (Except the girls).

i agree on the A/AA merger. i don't think merging class B & C would be fair at all though. don't get me wrong, the competetion would be fierce, but it would knock 8 very deserving teams out of the state tournament. it would also encourage even more consolidation at the class C level (in order to compete with B schools), and would thus result in those towns "losing their indentity". take a look at North Dakota. they have 2 classes. when you watch the class B tournament, i bet at least half the teams have 4 different towns in their name!

[Cat Grad]

Don't look now, but we've got some teams that way now I don't like our "tournament" process; would much rather see a true playoff. Just my personal preference. But of course, I believe in real competition rather than letting virtually everybody in the state being able to say "I played high school basketball