A Unified State Tournament?

Now that the Regionals have concluded and the regional champions have been crowned and will anticipate their forthcoming state championship games, I've always wondered what it would be like to have a final state tournament and crown an overall, unified State Champion. I started playing around with this idea for a while and this is what I came up with. Basically, the season is extended by two games and it gives a team to match up against the very best from all classes.


Tournament Qualification
The way a team will qualify for this will be through the normal procedures through the classifications with each team competing throughout the conference season and through the conference tournaments, if applicable. This all to determine conference seeds & wild cards for the sectionals. The sectionals and regionals would remain the same. Instead of the regional champions meeting in each classification's state title game, the regional champions would culminate in an 8-team, placement style tournament with each team guaranteed to play three games to end the season. Instead of being one and done, teams could play again but wouldnt be able to win the state title if they lost.


Tournament Venues
Just like the Regionals, venues for this State Championship Tournament would need to have a main site and an alternate site that is in close proximity of the main site. Ideally, this tournament would rotate between the Big Four schools (UNC, Duke, N.C. State, Wake Forest) and the cities of Greensboro and Charlotte - due to their central locations. The tournament would rotate each year between the six locations and should the state tournament be in Winston-Salem, the Regionals would have to go to Greensboro or Charlotte in order to be fair to Winston-Salem. Here are the locations....

UNC: Dean Smith Center & Carmichael Auditorium
Duke: Cameron Indoor Stadium & Carmichael Auditorium
N.C. State: RBC Center & Reynolds Coliseum
Wake Forest: Lawrence-Joel Veterans' Memorial Coliseum & Annex
Greensboro: Greensboro Coliseum & Fleming Gymnasium (UNCG)
Charlotte: Halton Arena (UNCC), Belk Center (Davidson), or Charlotte Bobcats Arena

Tournament Pairings
The pairings should be conducted by the NCHSAA through a specialized committee or The Associated Press. Each team should face a team from the opposite side of the brackets (ex. East vs West, West vs East). For the sake of time, I just went 1A vs 4A and 2A vs 3A in the first round and went from there. Brackets were simulated with the flip of a quarter. Here's what I came up with.

Winners indicated in BOLD.

Thursday's Games

4:00 pm - Main Site
Winston-Salem Prep vs Apex

5:30 pm - Main Site
West Bladen vs Trinity

7:00 pm - Main Site
Pisgah vs Kinston

8:30 pm - Main Site
Pamlico vs East Mecklenburg
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Friday's Games

Loser's Bracket

5:30 pm - Alternate Site
Apex vs West Bladen

8:30 pm - Alternate Site
Pisgah vs Pamlico


Winner's Bracket

5:30 pm - Main Site
Winston-Salem Prep vs Trinity

8:30 pm - Main Site
Kinston vs East Mecklenburg
_______________________________________

Saturday's Games

7th Place Game
5:30 pm - Alternate Site
West Bladen vs Pisgah

5th Place Game
8:30 pm - Alternate Site
Apex vs Pamlico

3rd Place Game
Trinity vs East Mecklenburg

State Championship Game
Winston-Salem Prep vs Kinston

I think this would bring a very festive atmosphere to high school basketball and it would also make each city earn alot of money off revenues from restauraunts and lodging. What do you guys think??

 

2 cents

Well, for starters, any idea that starts with a West Bladen loss can't be a good one!! JK.
Honestly, in order for something like this to work, the basketball season, and consequently football season would have to be pushed back to accomodate it. The playoffs already take the basketball players that also play baseball away for the first month of the season. As much as I enjoy watching high school basketball, bang for the buck would probably put this idea in the football arena before basketball.