The 1A boys’ basketball district tournaments will finally wrap up today with three more games on the schedule. Yet to be decided are the championship and third place finisher in District 3 and the last qualifier from District 6. Those games are set for this afternoon in Lamar and Alamosa respectively.
RPI numbers were also updated very early this morning (4:15am) so we can continue to our look at projecting regional tournament pairings. Of course, the Western regional is set as teams from Districts 1 and 7 simply cross bracket for two regional finals. The games are set for March 2nd in Glenwood Springs and both winners qualify for the state tournament.
- DeBeque vs Genoa Hugo
- Evangelical Christian vs Ouray
For the Northeast bracket, games wrapped up on Sunday with Haxtun taking the District 5 crown and Stratton/Liberty picking up the third place win. Arickaree/Woodlin ended up second but will advance to the nine team regional tournament Friday and Saturday in Sterling (NJC). Other qualifiers are Merino, Prairie and Peetz from District 4 along with Mile High Academy, Denver Waldorf and Front Range Baptist in District 8.
RPI standings will be used to seed the bracket with teams possibly moved to avoid district rematches in the opening round. The order of teams as of the latest release:
- Mile High Academy
- Front Range Baptist
- Peetz
- Haxtun
- Merino
- Arickaree/Woodlin
- Prairie
- Denver Waldorf
- Stratton/Liberty
The difficult part in laying out the bracket is that Peetz and Haxtun are in a tie at .556 for the third and fourth spot. It’s a critical tiebreaker as the team that ends up higher gets a first round bye while the other must get by a game on Friday before taking part in a regional final. We checked with CHSAA and if you extend the numbers out a bit, Peetz remains ahead of Haxtun in that race.
One other factor that could change the bracket involves a computer issue involving the regular season finale between Sedgwick County and Caliche. That game has not been entered into MaxPreps and the outcome will impact several teams in the regional; especially Peetz and Haxtun since each team played both during the regular season. Once the computer issue is solved and the game is entered, don’t be surprised if a few teams move up or down in RPI. Until that issue is fixed, the bracket cannot officially be laid out.
But if teams remain in the same order, the Northeast regional pairings could end up here.
- #6 Arickaree/Woodlin vs #7 Prairie — winner plays #1 Mile High Academy
- #5 Merino vs #8 Stratton/Liberty — winner plays #2 Front Range Baptist
- #4 Haxtun vs #9 Denver Waldorf — winner plays #3 Peetz
We exchanged Waldorf and Stratton/Liberty in spots eight and nine to avoid a district rematch between Haxtun and Stratton/Liberty in the first round.
In the Southeast, we still need to get results from District 3 before laying out the entire bracket. Walsh meets Springfield for the championship and then Kim/Branson battles Wiley for third place.
The key game is Walsh vs Springfield as that winner will greatly impact the entire regional bracket. Remember that seeding is different in the Southeast as each three-team pod consists of one team from each district. In other words, it’s not a true RPI seed.
If Walsh wins, then the bracket looks like this:
- McClave vs Kim/Branson or Wiley — winner plays #1 Sangre De Cristo
- Creede vs Kit Carson — winner plays #2 Walsh
- Springfield vs Sierra Grande or Primero — winner plays #3 Cheraw
A Springfield win results in a completely different set of pairings
- #1 Sangre De Cristo — vs Walsh vs Kit Carson
- #2 Cheraw — vs Creede vs Kim/Branson or Wiley
- #3 Springfield — vs McClave vs Sierra Grande or Primero
