By John Clark
West Bladen’s Knights were hammered by the NCHSAA seeding process for the State Play-offs that begin Tuesday night.
Coach Travis Pait’s Knights (20-7) open the play-offs Tuesday night at Goldsboro (22-3). If the Knights win, they play defending Class 2A champion Kinston at Kinston. If the Knights reach the third round, unbeaten No. 2 Eastern seed Fairmont awaits. All of those games would be on the road.
Coach Travis Pait shared with me during the Four County Conference Tournament that the Knights would be treated like a wild card entrant because they weren’t the No. 1 Class 2A seed from the Four County.
The NCHSAA Handbook reads, ‘A team that is second in a split conference must finish second in the overall conference standings to be seeded second. If the second team in a split conference finishes in third place in the overall conference standings, it will be seeded third.’
I have a problem with this rule in that West Bladen or no other team in a split conference is there by choice. The NCHSAA put them there and should not punish them because of the NCHSAA’s decision.
The other problem is that nothing takes into consideration the strength of leagues and in West Bladen’s case the Four County Conference was a very strong league this season.
In non-conference play, league champion Heide Trask was 9-1 losing only to Class 4A No. 12 seed Wilmington Hoggard 47-45. Runner-up Wallace-Rose Hill lost only to No. 5 Class 2A seed Jacksonville Northside, No. 11 Class 1A seed James Kenan and No. 8 Class 1A seed Whiteville in double overtime.
The league’s No. 1 2A seed Clinton finished in third place in the league but lost non-league games to Jacksonville Northside, Class 3A No. 13 seed Smithfield-Selma, Brooklyn Cayce, SC and Thurgood Marshall from Dayton, OH.
West Bladen’s only non-league loss was to Class 2A No. 2 Fairmont. Midway’s only non-league loss was to Class 3-A No. 12 seed Southern Lee.
Pender lost twice to Class 4A No. 5 seed Wilmington New Hanover and twice to Class 4A No. 29 seed Wilmington Laney.
East Bladen lost to Southern Lee, Whiteville, Class 4A No. 31 seed Wilmington Ashley and twice to Class 2A No. 22 seed St. Pauls.
Union lost non-league games twice to Class 1A No. 26 seed Hobbton and twice to Class 1A No. 28 Lakewood and once to Coastal Christian.
The Four County finished 43-24 against non-league foes and as you can see the losses were to a formidable list of opponents.
West Bladen was 1-2 against Heide Trask, 2-1 against Clinton, 4-0 against Midway and lost twice to Wallace-Rose Hill and once to Pender and Fairmont.
The Knights posted non-league wins over Whiteville, Class 4A West No. 7 seed Hoke County, two over Class 4A Purnell Swett, two over West Columbus and one each over South Robeson and South Columbus.
My point is that the NCHSAA takes none of this into account. They go solely by where you finished in your league. If you’re in a weaker league that is fine, but if you are in a strong league like the Four County that is a problem.
And then the luck of the draw plays a factor according to the Handbook, ‘If teams in any ‘tier’ of the seeding process have identical winning percentage, head-to-head competition will be used. If they have played one another, the winner receives the higher seed. If they haven’t played one another, a draw is made for the higher seed.’
So after the NCHSAA whittled off enough games to get the teams down to a 22-game record, the luck of the draw determines seeding. West Bladen and St. Pauls had identical 17-5 records after the reduction to a 22-game schedule, so evidentally St. Pauls won the draw and became the No. 22 seed and opens at Jordan-Matthews.
Before the seeding process began, there was a bracket that was set in advance and then modified every four years by realignment. If you were the conference No. 1 you were at home for a couple of rounds. If you were the conference No. 2 you were at home every other year and usually playing another No. 2. For West Bladen this year that would have produced a better outcome.
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