On the Sidelines with Dan Sousa: Stop the Madness! Region II Unbalanced Basketball Brackets Prevent Area's Top Teams From Meeting in Regional Finals

On the Sidelines with Dan Sousa
A column by VivaLoudoun editor Dan Sousa where he vents a little ...


(Feb. 21, 2010) - There is a strong chance that the Freedom High School and Loudoun County High School girls basketball teams are the top two Division 4 teams in the state of Virginia but in Region II they don't even rate the top seeds and one of the teams will face elimination before the regional finals as they have been placed on the same side of the bracket.

Loudoun County, No. 3 seed despite a convincing win over No. 2 seed Freedom on Saturday night at Freedom, will host No. 6 James Wood on Tuesday and a win would pit the two defending state champions (Freedom in D3 before moving up this year and LC in D4) next Thursday at Freedom ... a fifth meeting this season with only one team advancing to the finals and qualifying for the state tournament.

The No. 1 seed? Liberty despite losses this season to both Freedom and LC. And Potomac Falls, the third best Dulles District, has a good shot at making states if they can get by Brentsville on Tuesday on the road and then a win at Liberty on Thursday. Panthers coach Lynn Ewald should be buying lottery tickets with that break!

On the boys side, the same doomsday scenario plays out for the top two Dulles District boys teams and what many people think are the top two teams in the region, Potomac Falls, No. 1 seed, and Broad Run, a No. 5 seed, have been placed on the same side of the bracket. And how is Broad Run, 19-3 overall and ranked this year in the Washington Post Top 20 a No. 5 seed? Well, the Northwestern District crowned tri-champions in a 5-team district ... such that all three teams were placed ahead of the Spartans since they were "champions".

Luckily the Northwestern District didn't crown a 5-way champion (come on, Skyline, is in the district ... that is an esoteric chili joke ... email me if you get it and I'll send you a coney) because Broad Run would probably be staying home.

We heard at least one Dulles District coach call the Region II playoff brackets this season: "criminal" ... at VivaLoudoun we can only say: "Stop the Madness" ... hopefully the Dulles District athletic directors and principals will trash the current system and come up with a new region playoff plan next year. Let's start with never crowning "tri-champions" and we don't even like the way the Dulles District does "co-champions" ... there should be one regular season district champion each year and one banner hanging in one gym.

And then a tiebreaker criteria should always be head-to-head ... who cares what your district mark is. There is no way of knowing the level of talent the mark comes against. LC's and Freedom's one-loss marks were harder to achieve than the Liberty girls unblemished mark ... starting with a whopping 8-game district schedule!

Now to be fair, the Dulles District was fine with the system last year when five of eight Dulles District boys teams made the playoffs and several of those teams, er, stumbled into the postseason. And the Dulles District might also be to blame for the 6-team playoff brackets instead of a full 8-team playoff brackets in each division as we hear they voted to keep it to 12 teams total on each side vs. 16 when the AA split into two divisions for basketball.

Still all of that doesn't help the fact that on Thursday four of the top boys and girls Division 4 baskteball teams in the state may meet in Loudoun and two teams will move onto states and two teams will have their seasons end much earlier than they deserve.

Region II Basketball Brackets
Division 3 Boys Bracket
Division 4 Boys Bracket
Division 3 Girls Bracket
Division 4 Girls Bracket