February has been Tournament Month for me since 1996. My daughter and I attended several league games for Liberty (Issaquah) girls that season, and then stumbled into the D1 and D2 AAA tournament at Hec Ed quite by accident when we were up at UW for another reason. Haven’t missed Tournament Month since. From 1997 on it was the D2 3A (AA in 1997) girls tournament. That was where Liberty played through 2014, provided they qualified. I long felt that the D2 3A tournament was the toughest tournament in the state. But then I started delving into history and found some other tough nuts in the D7 and D9 B girls tournaments. Or how about the D5/8 4A girls tournaments? Any tournament with the Greater Spokane League girls is going to be a tough one.
One district that didn’t stand out as particularly difficult was District 3, West Central District. D3 4A tournament has always had a boat load of state berths. As whole leagues migrated into D3 (see Seamount moving from D2 to D3 in 2002), the number of berths ballooned in 2A and 3A classifications. But the number of actual GOOD TEAMs did not. For 2015 and 2016, D3 and D2 combined for 2A tournaments, Liberty participating. In 2015 Liberty was a good team, and after getting past White River, the only reliably good 2A girls team in D3, won the district title. Sammamish, the other D2 team was runner-up. I saw, up close, a lot of mediocre teams in that tournament. And a bunch of them made state. In 2016, Liberty was one of those mediocre teams, and they waltzed through into a third-place state berth. At state regionals, every one of those six teams (White River included) face-planted against the rest of the state.
So I’m not bullish at all on D3 girls basketball, even if they get a champion through now and then. There are good teams in D3, just way too few for the number of state berths handed to them by the WIAA geographical quota system.
In lieu of a weekly top 10 article, and in honor of Tournament Month, I’ve made up a chart projecting which girls teams make it to state, and who doesn’t, based on WIAA allocations and projecting success based on the TeamBrunnhilde points ratings. Of course they’ve got to win the tournament games. Bracketing affects that, too. What stands out is the number of teams outside the TeamBrunnhilde top 16 that will make it to state from District 3 (or combined district tournament involving District 3). There is also the enshrining of Emerald City mediocrity in the D1/2 1A tournament, where the Emerald City champion is automatically qualified to state and dropped into the district championship game. This year’s Emerald City best team, Seattle Academy, is currently rated #37 in 1A by me. That is not only dumb, it is grossly unfair: to make state in a mulit-league district tournament without having to even play anyone outside your league. Meanwhile eight 1A teams from District 5 rated above Seattle Academy will be sent home at or even before districts. Looking at the chart as a whole, there are 96 teams qualifying to state. There are 100 other teams that are rated above a team qualifying to state from another district, that will NOT be making it to state. And that is a best case scenario.
Just Play Fair. The WIAA motto. Is it fair that bad teams make it to state depending up where the district boundaries are drawn? I am absolutely opposed to basing state qualifications on ranking algorithms. But there needs to be some adjustment to the WIAA allocations that recognize merit. Districts that regularly produce good teams need to have more state berths allocated to them. It is not a transient thing. I’ve got 30 years of girls data and D3 has been pretty bad for most of those years. And the districts around Spokane have been pretty good.