Massey Basketball: Western Big 6 Report- Holiday Tourney Brackets

Sunday, December 22, 2024

Western Big 6 Report- Holiday Tourney Brackets

All 8 boys teams and all 8 girls teams will be headed to Christmas Tourneys. The boys going to DeKalb, Pekin, Bloomington, Sherrard, Taylorville, and Collinsville. The girls going to Dixon, Bloomington, and Mattoon.

Oldest Tourneys in Illinois- Chuck Dayton in DeKalb for boys and Mattoon for girls.

History Lessons- Pekin (Dawdie Hawkins Gym), Collinsville (Virgil Fletcher Gym), and Taylorville (Dolph Stanley Gym) have gyms named for some of Illinois’ greatest coaching legends.

Toughest Draws- Every coach feels like they get a bad draw in their holiday tourney, but some are worse than others.

Dixon Tourney Girls- Alleman 11-2 (#10-2A) vs Byron 9-0 (#11-2A) meet up in the first round at the Dixon Tourney.

Mattoon-Charleston Tourney Girls- Effingham 11-2 (Initially #1-3A) vs Effingham St.Anthony (#1-1A) are in the same pool at Mattoon. And they always play the “cross-town classic” right before Xmas. So these two teams will square off for the second time in a week.

Sherrard Tourney Boys- Sherrard 9-1 (#20-2A) vs Annawan 9-0 (#9-1A) play the opening game of the bracketed tourney.

Most Ranked 3A/4A Teams

Bloomington Tourney Girls will have Washington #1-3A, St.Ignatius #5-3A, Morton #8-3A, Kankakee #12-3A, Normal Comm #14-4A

For The Record

Pekin Tourney Boys- The top four seeds- Mt.Carmel, Mt.Zion, Moline, and Hersey have a combined record of 35-2.

Why Not?

I am sure there are other teams who ask for input into seeding but Bloomington Tourney generally has best pairings because- A) There is no manipulation to take care of the host school. B) They ask for input from the participating schools.

Hosting a tourney is not an easy thing, there are many factors in setting up pairings, and it is hard to make everyone happy. But here are some thoughts:

1- Ask coaches for seeds of the top 8 teams in the tourney. Make sure that the top four are separated, and only put one of 5-8 in each pool or in each quadrant.

2- Don’t have conference schools ever be in the same pool. Have conference schools in brackets so they would never play until semi-finals.

3- To make sure conference teams don’t play until semis, have it set for #1 to play #4 and #2 vs #3 in semis. But go ahead and manipulate to take care of conference teams so in quarters, maybe #1 plays #6 and #2 plays #8.

4- The IHSA has proven that you don’t have to seed and pair a three weeks ahead, wait and do pairings after teams have played more games- seed and pair two weeks before the tourney.

5- All this sounds good, but ultimately the host school is doing the work, so I guess they can do whatever they want. And if schools don’t like it, go some place else.

Mid-Season Test

Ultimately teams who are hoping to win a conference title or a Regional/Sectional title want to use the Xmas tourneys as a chance to play the quality of teams they will have to play to reach their post-season goals. So a good tourney for a good team should be-

Game 1- Game similar to first game of the Regional.

Game 2- Game similar to Regional Championship game.

Game 3 & 4- Game similar to Sectional games.