I was driving home from Carmel recently and I got to thinking about things I would change about high school basketball if I were the King of Sports.
This is not the first time I have considered these, nor the first time I have written about some of them.
It came to my mind because I heard on the radio that baseball was going to use a 20-second pitch clock during spring training games this year as an experiment. The point would be that the pitcher has to pitch the ball in 20 seconds, or a ball is added to the count.
Its purpose is to speed the game up.
What things would I change if I had the power to do so?
Basketball Sectional Alignments. If I were king, I would align 2A, 3A and 4A basketball sectionals from 6, 7 and 8 teams to four at each site. Semifinals would be played on Friday night, championships on Saturday. Regionals would be four-team events on Saturdays with semifinals during the day and championships that night. The semistates would also go back to being four-team affairs with semis during the day and championships that night. That would still leave us with a north and south representative from each class who would play for their state championship the following Saturday.
What about 1A?
Well 1A is being choked with these small, private schools who frankly have no business being in the tournament at all. They are charter schools and little academies who will never be competitive in sports (which is not a horrible thing by the way) but insist on being IHSAA accredited. Fine, but 1A would keep their 7 and 8 team sectionals, with 2-game regionals and 1-game semi-states.
Home teams and the bye. Assuming we can’t pull off change No. 1, then I would like to see the IHSAA to make it so the host school never gets a first-round bye (and I would put that into place for all high school sports).
The home team has a distinct advantage by hosting the sectional anyway. It’s their court. It’s their infield. It’s the shortest driving distance for their fans.
To help even out the competitive advantage, the host school must play in the first round.
You also must consider that your host schools, in most cases, will generate the most fans for the obvious reason. If money matters, and it does, assuring that the larger fan base plays three times instead of just two will improve the tournament’s bottom line.
Team fouls per quarter. I would like to see high school basketball go to a fouls-per-quarter system to get to the 1-and-1 and double bonus. My initial thought is 5 fouls per team in a quarter would result in 1-and-1, and from the seventh foul on in that quarter it would be two shots. I could be talked into four and six for the limits. Maybe they could experiment in the JV games so see what works best.
The jump ball. Very few officials can fairly toss the ball above the two people who are jumping at the beginning of the game or overtime, so let’s just have a coin toss after the national anthem and lineup announcements. Visitor calls it, and the winner gets the ball to start the game at midcourt directly across from the scorer’s table.
Basketball power plays. I would like to see certain overly-aggressive acts ruled in such a way that the offending player has to sit for two minutes of game action. Things that might be considered unsportsmanlike and possibly worthy of an intentional foul or technical would now lead to the offending player or players being sent off to the scorer’s table for two minutes. That means the other team would have two minutes to play 5-on-4, or if one player from each was found guilty, it could be 4-on-4. Hockey does it and I like it.
Some things, however, I would not change.
There are a lot of people clamoring for creating a seeding system for each tournament so the best teams don’t have to face each other right away. There are no guarantees in these tournaments, so I am not ready to go there yet. Maybe someday.
I also think that the shot clock is a horrible idea and will not in any way aid in the development of basketball players. It only leads to more people standing around while one person forces up a shot against the deadline.
I hereby wave my scepter over these things and say, “so let them be written, so let them be done.”
