First off, I am in support of 4 classes for all sports, including football. All sports in same classifications will help with rivals remaining so.
I have coached HS basketball since 2001 in A LOT of places (I’m active duty military): Puerto Rico, Washington State, Hawaii, North Carolina, Tennessee (at 2 HS’s, Beech and now Franklin) & in my opinion the state tournament process in North Carolina is the best.
Basketball season in NC looks a lot like the NCAA model and consists of:
1. Non District games
2. District games
3. District Tournament
4. 64 Team SINGLE ELIMINATION State Tournament. (Always thought that if you loose in the post season, your season should be over!) Higher seed hosts all the way through the Elite 8. Semi Finals at UNC-Charlotte and UNC-Greensboro and State title game is at Dean Dome the following weekend.
**Teams are required to enter games into M@x Pr3ps and their algorithm is used for ranking.
**Teams can eliminate 1 non-district loss from algorithm to encourage tough scheduling.
**District Tourney Champ get auto bid, each District get 3 guaranteed (makes consolation game VERY important).
**Remaining seeds set via unapproved website rankings
**Bracket is broken up East & West. Take furtherest East school and move westward until you have 32 schools for the East Bracket and remaining 32 schools are in West Bracket. The following year start furtherest west and move eastward. If one mid-state school has to go East and their in-district rival West, TOO BAD!