Dan Weber’s Just Sayin’: Time for KHSAA to fix Sweet 16, the Ninth Region has had enough

Excuse us, KHSAA, but could we talk? Yeah, it’s us, the basketball folks in the Ninth Region.

And now, in between the Girls’ and Boys’ Sweet 16’s, it seems the perfect time to bring this up.

Yeah, it’s pretty important. And timely, although there’s obviously nothing you can do about it this year. But we must talk.

Although we’re not sure where to begin with the two issues that impact the Ninth Region competitively and from a health and safety perspective for everybody else, as well, but none more so than the Ninth Region because our bad “luck of the draw” that just keeps going on and on.

Cooper girls’ 8:30 Thursday opener was hardly a reason to cheer for the 9th Region fans. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

What’s happening to the teams here — the athletes, the coaches and the fans — is simply not fair. For competition to matter, it must be fair, even though Ninth Region teams have made it look less so by overcoming that unfairness the way they have. But they shouldn’t have to.

More on that in a minute. But here’s a bit of context. In this year’s men’s NCAA basketball season, for the first time since records were kept in 1939 — which if we’re doing the math right is 85 years — that two teams, North Carolina State and Temple, played five games in five days this week in expanded conference tournaments. Never happened before in college basketball history.

Interesting, no? But what does that have to do with the KHSAA and Sweet 16 for us here in Northern Kentucky?

A great deal as it turns out. Eight times in the last 10 years, the KHSAA has asked the Ninth Region Boys’ champ to play four games in three days – and in all but one of those draws, asked them to play three games in just over 24 hours if they kept winning – essentially three games in one day.

Newport Coach Ron Snapp had no luck finding a way to replicate exactly Sweet 16 challenge for 9th Region teams. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

Who does that? Newport Coach Rod Snapp said he tried to duplicate the challenges for a Ninth Region team in the Sweet 16 by finding one Indiana tournament where he could play two games in one day – but three. The NCAA’s top limit for the men is one game a day.

But it’s so ordinary now, we hardly even notice it. So when the KHSAA announced this year’s draw last month and then placed the Ninth Region champ (Newport, Covington Catholic or Cooper) in the 8:30 Thursday game at Rupp Arena – they say it helps the crowd with people driving down from Northern Kentucky after work, the coaches here hardly reacted.

“Isn’t that where we always are?” said CovCath Coach Scott Ruthsatz? Yep, as in all the last eight years in a bottom bracket/Thursday game. But do you realize how ridiculously unlikely that is. We googled it. Consider that it’s a coin flip – heads or tails – you either get into the Wednesday games in the top bracket – as eight teams do — or not, as the other eight do.

So what are the odds of having heads – or tails – come up eight times out of eight? Well, here’s what we got out of googling that. Here’s how they describe the odds of it coming up with eight one way or the other – as the Ninth Region has in drawing Thursday games: If you did this 10,000 times, only on four occasions could you get eight straight one way or the other. You almost can’t even express that in a percentage. One in 2,500! It’s like 0.4 percent chance of happening naturally.

CovCath Coach Scott Ruthsatz (Photo by Dan Weber/NKyTribune)

But something else must be happening for the luck of the Ninth Region to have to keep playing on Thursday. And a quick review of the last decade makes it clear that the beneficiaries seem often to be teams from Central Kentucky, so maybe no discouraging words have been heard at the KHSAA’s Lexington headquarters from the Scott County’s and George Rogers Clarks of the world who so often seem to be playing on Wednesday, as No. 1 Great Crossing will be doing this week.

Should Newport get its hoped-for championship game rematch with Great Crossing, the 11th Region champs from Georgetown would have 24 hours more rest from Game 1, 9 ½ more hours rest from Game 2 and 2 ½ hours more rest from Game 3 – than Newport, should both win on Saturday — enough for a bit of down time, a meal and a walk-through, something it will be almost impossible for Newport to do.

For the entire week, that could mean as many as 36 hours additional rest if a Wednesday team at the top of the bracket plays a Thursday team at the bottom of the bracket at 7 p.m. Saturday for the state championship. Does that sound fair in any way to a Thursday winner that on Saturday walks out of winning its semifinal game at what, 4:30 after the press conferences, and then what does it do?

And yet, in the last 10 years with champions (2020 canceled for Covid), all three Thursday teams to win championships – meaning seven Wednesday teams won – were from the Ninth Region. Yep, in 2021, it was Highlands, coming out of an 11 a.m. game Thursday and then CovCath doing the extremely difficult – winning it all twice from the 8:30 Thursday game, where Newport is this week.

Did we say 8:30 Thursday? Wait a minute, wasn’t that the time slot that was given to the Ninth Region Champion Lady Jags of Cooper last week? Yep.

So here’s another calculation. If the Newport boys had a one-in-eight chance to draw into the bottom bracket 8:30 game and then so did the Cooper girls, isn’t that Ninth Region combo at least 64-to-1 odds to happen? Checked with the top math guys at CovCath and they backed me up on that.

Newport’s Taylen Kinney drives against Lyon County in last Year’s Sweet 16 first game. (Photo by Dale Dawn/NKyTribune)

Just more of the improbable Ninth Region bad luck, apparently. Although the girls haven’t had as much of either – good luck or bad — as the guys. This year’s No. 2-ranked Cooper team did, however, having drawn into the bottom bracket, face a loaded bracket with the Nos. 1 (Sacred Heart), No. 2, No. 3 GRC and No. 4 Pikeville all in the bottom bracket although Cooper had the late starting time. And none of the top four Sweet 16 teams were in the top bracket.

Over the last decade, six of the Ninth Region Girls’ champs “drew” into the Thursday bracket game. Four did not, one of which was Holy Cross in 2015 when the Lady Indians took advantage, winning their state championship, the only one of the last 10 years for the Ninth Region girls. In that time, like for the boys, the split had seven state champs coming out of Wednesday with that extra day of rest and only three from Thursday.

But then, the girls – like everybody else – had to contend with Sacred Heart’s four straight state championships and undefeated four-year Kentucky run. As for Sacred Heart, they were good enough to win two titles out of a Wednesday start, two out of Thursday. It didn’t matter to the Valkyries. Although they drew the way they should have – twice in the top, twice in the bottom. Hardly the way Ninth Region teams seem to.

Now don’t get the idea that this is simply a shot at the KHSAA. In so many ways, the iconic Sweet 16 is unlike anything anywhere else. As an unclassified tournament (only Delaware does that) with all 320 teams with a chance and the small schools like Newport and Lyon County with a real shot, the KHSAA is to be applauded for going with the Sweet 16’s great history and tradition and not bowing to the everybody-wins-a-trophy crowd.

And then there’s this as we continue our KHSAA shout-out. The KHSAA’s web site (khsaa.org) that keeps all schools’ and teams’ records and rosters and stats and schedules and up-to-date leaders is unparalleled in the nation and more user-friendly for coaches and administrators, media and fans, than anything we’ve seen.

But the way they do the draw/placement to play four games in three days for the Thursday teams and the way all of it can impact the Ninth Region is just not right.

Fix it, KHSAA. Change it so that people up here actually trust that you’re playing fair with them. And so that you never, ever ask a high school player to play the toughest, most important, most challenging three games in their entire high school career in barely more than 24 hours. Or require one region’s champ to start on Thursday eight straight years.

Sure, there are downsides to playing the championship game on Sunday, as happened for a while. And Saturday’s doubleheader surely works for the championship game fans if not for the athletes. But the upside of having all the teams playing on as level a playing field as you can make it would seem to balance that out.

Contact Dan Weber at dweber3440@aol.com. Follow him on X (formerly Twitter) @dweber3440.