This year, the AIA hosted the inaugural Open Division playoff for basketball after a four year run of football establishing success in that area (Congratulations to Perry boys and Desert Vista girls!).
I asked Jacob Seliga, Eric Newman, Greg Rosenberg and Richard Smith how they felt about the way the tournament was executed, and if they'd make any changes in the future:
Jacob Seliga
"I felt that the first year of the open division was a success. At first there were question marks with the rankings system, much like football in its first year when Saguaro wasn’t ranked in the initial rankings and Nogales was. But the system corrected itself and outside of Deer Valley, who I felt should’ve been in, the rankings were solid.
However overall, I do feel like there’s still room for improvement.
Once the final eight teams are decided, the bracket should reseed for the sake of creating quality matchups for all four quarterfinal games. We shouldn’t have two teams in the top eight face off while two teams in the middle-to-lower face off for a spot in the semifinals."
"I also do believe that the AIA should work with the ABCA and find a way to incorporate 3A and 2A into the bracket. Defending state champion Perry has consistently scheduled 2A Rancho Solano Prep every season, 2A Highland Prep beat 4A Bradshaw Mountain (who competed in the open and made the 4A semifinals). 3A back-to-back champion Valley Christian defeated semifinalist Desert Mountain during the summer.
The smaller schools are beating top programs during the summer and during Holiday tournaments. They’ve proven to beat the best and should be able to compete with the best.
Lastly, I do believe a human element should be added when ranking the top 32 teams for the bracket. This is important because the amount of teams from each conference in the open determines how many teams in each conference make a play-in game. We have to make sure that the right teams are in and that they’re properly ranked to create as much competitive fairness as possible. Have it be like the March Madness selection show. We already have a bracket hosts with Team AZV members Zach Alvira and Brett Quintyne as well as AZPreps365 writer Jose Garcia."
Eric Newman
"I think the Open was fantastic. It ended up, like in football, being 6A teams in the final few for the boys, which isn’t a surprise. But we got to see, for the first time, how some of the top 4A and 5A teams got to fare at the highest level.
In the girls bracket, I think it was a different type of year than normal, in that Desert Vista was far better than the field. In past years - maybe even a season ago - there were four, five or six teams that could have legitimately competed for that top spot. I really think that the girls were more important to have this tournament for than the boys, as there have been a few teams at the absolute top of the heap for several years."
"I think it was a bit clunky with the two possible games in the open before falling down to the conference bracket. I thought that the teams would have a letdown in the conference tournaments. But I ended up wrong. I watched every Flagstaff girls game in the playoffs, and they took just as much from their tournament win as they would have in the past. It ended up working out very well. I’m happy this happened."
Gregg Rosenberg
"There are some flaws with some of the AIA playoffs, but we did ADD a shot clock and a new Open Division this year. What can they possibly improve next year?
Can we get one BIG school or arena to host the Final-4 or Elite-8? Especially the OPEN, with many eyes on those games?"
"Can we get a HUMAN to seed the OPEN teams so teams don’t see each other too early in the same conference or even the same region? We had multiple teams play each other the for the third time in early rounds.
I do like how the fact we can celebrate 1-6A separately, but it may be nice to see 1-3A finals one day, 4-5A finals one day, and then 6A-OPEN on another day.
Should we do all the conference championships first and then go to the OPEN? If so, we need someone to seed the teams.
The 3A winner (Valley Christian) would have been worthy of the OPEN this year, as they were the top rated team left from the AIA's algorithm.
And speaking of the algorithm–strength of schedule needs to be taken into account way more. Period! Overall, I do think it was a successful season that helped grow the sport in the right direction."
Richard Smith
"There’s more momentum for a return to regular conference brackets in 1A-6A and have the Open Division as an 8-team post-conference bracket, particularly among coaches. 4A, 5A and 6A boys and girls champions would earns automatic bids, and the other five teams would be at large, with the option to invite an especially dominant 3A or 2A champion – think this year’s Valley Christian boys team.
Don’t expect sweeping changes like this in 2023-24. I’d be shocked if this year’s 32-team format before the 6A-4A tournaments, with the final 8 playing elimination games in the Open, and the other 24 going back into their conference tournaments, is likely to stick for a second year.
That said, some aspects of the basketball Open Division process NEED to change.
On March 1st the Liberty boys Head Coach Mark Wood took in the 5A boys basketball semifinal at Millennium, as the Tigers battled Sunrise Mountain. His Liberty team’s season had ended 11 days earlier, in an Open Division quarterfinal loss at eventual champion Perry. To get to that point, Liberty had beat Millennium in an Open Division second round game on February 10th. Millennium dropped back into 5A, and Liberty went into the single-elimination final eight of the Open. Wood simply asked “What team is having a better experience?” And it’s hard to argue that Liberty, or the three other teams that lost in the Open quarterfinals, were having a more fun or more meaningful postseason that any team that got to the 4A-6A semifinals.
Ironwood lost at home in the quarterfinals, but Liberty, St. Mary’s and Notre Dame Prep’s “reward” for being – in theory – one of Arizona’s best teams, was a road game in a high school gym two weeks before the Open final. Same with the Salpointe Catholic, Pinnacle and McClintock's girls teams.
So my first tweak to the Open would be that if the "final eight" kicks off a one-and-done, and places those eight teams above their conference bracket, it really needs to feel that way.
All boys and girls Open Division quarterfinals, semifinals and finals need to be played in an arena. I think, with a bit of schedule manipulation, Veterans Memorial Coliseum can host all four Open semifinals. But we’ll need a different venue for the quarterfinals.
To me, the first call the AIA should make is to Grand Canyon to see if GCU Arena is available for two afternoons/nights somewhere in the range of February 20-25th. That’s the ideal Open Division quarterfinal venue, and the rest of the bracket should be built around it. If GCU is unavailable, Desert Financial Arena in Tempe is the next call. Desert Diamond Arena in Glendale would be the perfect place, but I totally understand why the AIA balks at the arena’s rental price and terms that allow the arena to boot out a rental tenant for a more lucrative replacement like a concert as close as two weeks before the date.
Assuming one of these venues works for the quarterfinals, the busy schedules for ASU and GCU basketball probably preclude either arena from also having the semifinals, so it’s back to old reliable – Veterans Memorial Coliseum – for those. And those games need to be closer to the finals.
The girls Open semifinals were NINE days before the final and the boys semis were eight! The boys Open semifinals also were the same night as the 3A boys and girls semifinals at the Coliseum. Leave those games alone. Leave that whole weekend before the 4A-Open title games alone.
The weekend before the Open should be only 2A and 3A semifinals and finals at VMC, and maybe some conference quarterfinals at high schools. But as long as Alchesay or a Navajo Nation team, boys or girls, makes the final four, the rest of the state can and should sit back and enjoy the show as Arizona’s best fans take center stage.
Once 3A is done, handle the 4A-thru-Open this way in the season’s final week:
Monday: 4A-6A girls basketball semifinals at campus sites.
Tuesday: 4A-6A boys basketball semifinals at campus sites.
Wednesday: All four Open semifinals in a row at Veterans Memorial Coliseum, starting at 2 or 2:30 p.m. that afternoon.
Thursday: 4A girls and boys final at VMC.
Friday: 5A girls and boys final at MC.
Saturday: 6A girls and boys and Open girls and boys finals at VMC."
"So we’ve given the top teams a bigger stage. How do we make the next Open brackets more balanced and closer to reality?
The easy answer? Fix the power points.
The linear and most sensical solution to the power points system is to adopt a similar multiplier that the AIA added in 2022 for football: (10x) points for 6A wins, (9X) for 5A wins and (8X) for 4A wins. Since each team has 18 regular season games, as opposed to 10, maybe the basketball multiplier is (5x) for 6A wins, (4x) for 5A wins and (3x) for 4A wins.
The more convoluted, but more fun way? Form a committee. And yeah I’d like to be on it – along with Gregg Rosenberg, Jacob Seliga, Zach Alvira, Richard Obert, Brittany Bowyer, Anthony Ray, Cedric Cobb (both) and others who make the time to see a lot of games.
There’s one caveat- having a committee just pick and seed 32-team brackets would render the regular season almost meaningless. But there are too many gaps in the formula – like out-of-state games – and it’s too rewarding to teams running undefeated through weak regions.
So I’d propose a committee reseed by tiers only. Reseed teams ranked 1-10, then 11-20 and 21-30. Have the committee pick the last two teams in the final, so a good team with several early losses because of an injury, like the Sunrise Mountain boys, can get in.
And reseeding in groups of 10 probably means a team like ALA-Gilbert North boys or Mesquite girls drops to #10 for the Open seeding, but no further. A committee completely reseeding probably drops them more."
