All teams to be seeded in Michigan districts

By JASON JUNO

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LANSING — The MHSAA is going all in on seeding for its boys and girls district basketball tournaments in the spring.

The state had only dipped its toes into seeding for the last several years — it ranked only the top two teams with the goal of the best teams meeting in the district final.

But that’s all it did.

The higher seeded teams weren’t guaranteed to get the home games it seemingly earned and the 1 seeds didn’t always get to play the weaker teams leading up to the district final.

Now all of the teams in the district will be seeded with the MPR computer formula. Higher seeds, with a couple of exceptions, will get to play at home.

Each district will still have the option to hold the entire district at one site, which the local Division 4 district has long opted to do. All of the teams in that case will still be seeded and matched up accordingly.

Ironwood girls coach Jesse Mackey said every team should be seeded based on their record and strength of schedule.

And now they will be.

“I think that was a much-needed step. I think the state of Michigan is finally going in the right direction,” Ironwood boys coach Adam Mackey said. “There should be a reason why we play all these games in the regular season. I know there’s conference championships, all-conference, things like that, but I think, playoffs you should be rewarded for the kinds of games you have.”

In the old system, the seeding system was only used to determine the 1 and 2 seeds and put them on opposite sides of the bracket, so they would be ensured a chance to meet in the final.

That did often work to help avoid a blowout in the final after the best matchups sometimes happened in the earlier rounds back when the MHSAA didn’t seed any of the teams.

But the state didn’t promise other benefits to those top-two seeds. The rest of the matchups, and the game locations (unless all games were at one site), were still left to random draw.

In the districts that were not held at one site, 1 seeds sometimes played at 2 seeds, or at teams that weren’t even seeded. When the 1 seed did host, it was only because of random draw.

Ewen-Trout Creek girls coach Jacky Besonen knew the frustrations of the two-seed system as well as anyone.

In 2020, the Panthers earned the top seed in the district but still had to play at No. 2 L’Anse in the district final. Each of the games were in different spots that one year and the final would have been in Ewen with this all-in seeding. They also would sometimes draw tougher early-round opponents than the 2 seed over the years.

“That’s what we’ve been talking about forever — why are they doing all this and only seeding the top two,” she said. “It really was always bad for the No. 1 seed. For years, we would be the No. 1 seed and have to play a tougher competitor than the No. 2 seed. So, yeah, this makes much more sense.”

Bessemer boys coach Richard Matrella doesn’t think the change matters all that much with all games in the Division 4 District 97 tournament they’re a part of being played in the same location as of late. There will be some other benefits to being a higher seed, like better matchups along the way, but home games are the big benefit of a higher seed, and that’s irrelevant when one site hosts all of the games.

“Home-court advantage is the key and with the tournament-style, it eliminates seeding importance,” he said.

Ironwood, on the other hand, will likely be in non-traditional brackets where each game is at a different location, now that it’s moved up to Division 3, where its district spans from here to the Copper Country to Iron River and over to Ishpeming. That means earning a home game will have value to them.

There is one other exception to the higher seed hosting, and the Ironwood boys could benefit from that already this year. Even brackets with games played at multiple sites have one team selected as the overall tournament host and that’s Ironwood this year. So the Devils will host all of the district games it’s playing in, regardless of what seed it is.

Perhaps down the road, the MHSAA will keep seeding more teams, and even include the regional teams, something E-TC boys coach Brad Besonen would like to see, rather than just facing conference teams again in the district.

“But getting it at the district level at least is a good start,” he said.