Catholic high-school girls’ basketball coaches are demanding league officials pick a playoff plan and stick with it — rather than continually changing the league’s playoff structure.
The Catholic High School Athletic Association scrapped its often-tweaked five-to-eight team state tournament format to give dioceses equal postseason representation across the AA, A, and B divisions. It replaced the AA and A tournaments with a four-team playoff with a representative from each of the dioceses competing, but officials and coaches couldn’t agree on how to pick the representatives.
The Brooklyn-Queens coaches rejected the league’s original proposal in November. Athletic directors ratified a plan in January, but league officials unilaterally altered the plan a week before playoffs. Now, the diocesan tournaments’ top winner will appear in the AA playoffs and the tourney’s fifth- and sixth-place finishers (this year Nazareth and St. Francis Prep) will duke it out to see who will play in the league’s lower-ranked A division playoffs — the previous plan sent the tournament’s runner-up to the A state field. Similarly under the new plan, some A teams will have to play up in AA. The previous plan sent the tournament’s runner-up to the A state field.
But sending AA-level teams to play A teams is like setting a wolf among lambs, and conversely, forcing A teams to play up in the AAs is like throwing a lamb in the wolves’ den, coaches said.
“Why would our group agree to something like that when we were already complaining their fifth place team was playing in the A,” Morris said. “Now you are going to have your second-place team playing in the A. That is crazy. It absolutely ridiculous. It was supposed to be their last-place team people [in A]. That would have been kind of fair.”
Morris, whose team lost to Brooklyn-Queens third-place finisher Mary Louis by just four points. Three teams from the Brooklyn-Queens diocese have won Class-A state crowns in the last seven seasons after playing as AA teams for all of their regular seasons.
The Rockville Center diocese has already dubbed St. Anthony’s its AA team and Cardinal O’Hara (Buffalo) of the Monsignor Martin division earned the honor by winning the league’s regular-season title. An Archdiocesan representative has yet to emerge.
Three teams from the Brooklyn-Queens diocese have won Class-A state crowns in the last seven seasons after playing as AA teams for all of their regular seasons.
The Brooklyn-Queens coaches have a problem with the plan, too, because it rewards St. Francis Prep and Nazareth for having losing seasons. The Terriers did not win a league game and Nazareth, who ended up being fourth-place Molloy in the diocesan quarterfinals, went 3–7.
“So we lose to a team that is going to play for an A representative in the playoffs and what is our status?,” Stanners coach Scott Lagas said. “Because we fought to win a couple of games during the regular season we don’t get a state bid.”
St. Francis Prep coach Kerri White said her team is happy to get a chance to play more games after falling 51–40 to Mary Louis its semifinal. She is just doing what the league decided and would have no mater what the format was.
Nazareth coach Ron Kelley — whose squad is defending A-Federation champions — will abide by the guidelines, despite believing other teams are more deserving of the opportunity.
“You reward the teams that played well throughout the year,” he said. “The top two teams going to Federation that was a sound idea. I don’t like the idea of giving the teams that didn’t play well or do well another chance. They didn’t deserve it.”
A last minute adjustment was also made to the Class-B state playoffs, causing frustration for those coaches, said Monsignor McClancy coach Dewey Hopkins.
“I’ve been coaching at McClancy for four years and for four years it’s been a different format for the playoffs all four years,” he said. “That’s the biggest issue I have.”
The boys’ league, which is intersectional, guarantees each of its teams two playoff games, much like the girls’ league did the last six years. The boys’ playoffs format has not changed in the last two decades, and girls’ coaches want similar opportunities for their players.
“Whatever it is, we have to change with it, but it puts an uncomfortability in coaches not knowing that,” Bishop Loughlin coach Chez Williams said. “That’s not good. The league has to be firmer with their rule.”
