QR, Schaumburg and ICST illogic

On Tuesday, the Patriots traveled back to the site of their most recent tournament conquest, Quentin Road, for the anuual tri-match between Calumet, Quentin Road, and Schaumburg. Calumet had played each team in its own tournament, Schaumburg in the first round of bracket play and Quentin Road in the finals. Neither team came close to beat CCS, but neither team was a pushover, either. Tuesday was a little bit of a different story, from what I hear. Both opponents managed nineteen points against the girls. Coach Carr reported that it seemed the neither QR nor Schaumburg really wanted to play us. Add that Faith was still on the top of her game, continuing her great play from the QR tournament, and you have two blowouts. Schaumburg was the first victim, going down 25-6, 25-13. Quentin Road then went down 25-11, 25-8. As is it was with Ridgewood, it's a little sad, because both of these teams have played CCS tough in recent years.

The end result is that the Patriots are now 36-3, with a thirty-two game winning streak. Calumet's last loss was on August 28, almost seven weeks ago. One of the losses was to Eastern Greene, now 31-1 and raked fifth in the state in 2A, and another was to Lafayette Central Catholic, ranked #2 in 1A [UPDATE: LCC is now ranked #1]. The Patriots have won 84 sets and lost 10. They have scored 2,252 points versus 1,370 scored against them, or an average of 23.96 points for and 14.57 points against. Per Maxpreps, Faith is sixth in the state in hitting percentage and eighth in kills per set. Taylor is second in the state in aces at 1.37 per set.

And now for the rant. The rant is softened somewhat by the news that the person responsible for some of the inexplicable locations, schedule and seedings in stepping down after this year's tournaments. We are trying to restrain our expressions of delight. Perhaps there will now be sense in the ICST state tournament.

Now for some background. This probably began earlier than two years ago, but that was the first tournament that gave indications that thing weren't quite right. Two years ago the tournament had four regional tournaments, the winners of which advanced to the state tournament. Somehow the three best teams in the state - CCS, Heritage and Faith - all ended up in the same regional. Faith was an hour from the Indy, where the central regional was held, but nearly two hours from the northeast regional site. Hmmm. Last year, this was supposed to be avoided by seeding all the teams in the state, so the top seeds would all advance to the state final four. However, the seeding was completely screwed up, with Heritage, probably the third best team in the state last year, seeded seventh, and they ended up losing to us early on. On top of this, we were forced to travel to Lafayette four times over two weekends to play the state tournament games, as all tournament games were played there - no regional sites.  One common theme for both years was that Horizon, coached by the tournament director, always managed to make the final four.

This year is not very different. One of the improvements is that several of the weaker teams last year aren't in the tournament this year, but the tourney director can't take credit for that. One of the (many) weaknesses of this year's tourney is that all of the strong teams are in the north - a situation that cries out for an arrangement like last year where all teams are seeded, top to bottom. And since there were far fewer teams this year, this could have been done over a weekend at a central location. But as it is, there are six teams in the north and seven in the south. From what I can find out on the internet, at least four teams in the south would fall into the classification of "slightly higher play than gym class". The remainder are probably around the level of Quentin Road. In the north, however, the worst two or three teams are at the QR level. Then there are three teams a notch above them, and then CCS.

Now on to the north seeding, which is as follows: CCS, #1, Clinton Christian #2, Faith Christian, #3, Lakeland Christian, #4, Heritage Christian, #5 and Goshen #6.  Does this make sense? You tell me. During the season, Clinton Christian (#2) was defeated by Goshen (#6) at least twice, maybe three times. Lakeland Christian (#4) defeated Clinton (#2). Also, CCS has played all of the teams in the region except Goshen, and I have witnessed all of those games. I would rank the four that I saw as follows: Heritage Christian, Lakeland Christian, Faith and Clinton. Logic would dictate that Goshen should be somewhere in between Lakeland and Clinton (lost to Lakeland, defeated Clinton). Since Clinton defeated Faith head-to-head, I'll grant that Clinton should be ahead of Faith, but from what we saw, I think Faith just had a bad game. Bottom line is that possibly the weakest, and certainly one of the two weakest teams, is seeded #2. The two strongest teams besides us get to play each other in the first round, with the winner facing CCS. So, two of the three strongest teams in the state get eliminated before the final four.

Back to the south region. Once again, Horizon gets to play the weakest of the weak in its two games to get to the final four. I grant that the geographical division makes sense, however, and it's not Horizon's fault that the south teams are so poor. Of course, when Horizon gets to the final four and has to face the powerhouses of the north, they will be quickly eliminated, right? Not so fast. The semifinal games are the two representatives from the north playing each other, then the two from the South!. So we travel to the state site (which originally was going to be Indianapolis) to play a team right in our region. A team that was at our regional site the week before! Why not just play each other there and travel for only one game? I will tell you why. It would expose how weak the south is. Two blowouts are harder to explain than one. Everyone knows how good CCS is this year, so that blowout can be explained away, but both north teams blowing out the both south teams would be different.

We are thankful for a couple of things: the final four site is now in Lafayette instead of Indy. Also, the games are not spread out so much, so Coach Carr doesn't have to figure out if it's better to stay overnight or get up early to travel. We play today at 3:00 CDT, and if the girls win, they play at 2:30 the next Saturday. If they win that game, the championship is at 5:30. I think the actually championship game will our first game, but what do I know. And maybe next year there will be some logic used is setting up the state tournament.