As the boys’ basketball regular season winds down over the next 10 days, Colorado Preps will begin the process of projecting postseason pairings. We begin with Class 2A boys and please note that the format will revert back to the 2019 system of district and regional tournaments to determine which eight teams qualify for the state tournament.
The top three teams from each district tournament will advance to the regionals with the remaining eight berths selected as wildcards from RPI. For our projections, we use current conference standings to determine district champions and where there is more one conference grouped together for a district, the method is RPI. In case of a tie in conference standings, we use head-to-head results for the first tiebreaker and if the two teams have not played, then RPI is the deciding factor.
So this is our district projections. We list the projected champions first with the next two qualifiers:
- DISTRICT 1: Sanford #1 – Crested Butte and Monte Vista
- DISTRICT 2: Yuma #1 – Wray and Wiggins
- DISTRICT 3: Mancos #1 – Ignacio and Cedaredge
- DISTRICT 4: Denver Christian #1 – Limon and Byers
- DISTRICT 5: Meeker #1 – Vail Mountain and Vail Christian
- DISTRICT 6: Holly #1 – Fowler & Crowley County
- DISTRICT 7: Heritage Christian #1, Lyons and Front Range Christian
- DISTRICT 8: Peyton #1 – Thomas MacLaren and Calhan
A few notes as Crowley County and Rye are tied for third in District 6 but Crowley won the head-to-head so they move forward as an automatic qualifier. Vail Christian and Cedaredge are tied for third in District 5 but the Bruins move to District 3 for the postseason and that alleviates that tie. Front Range Christian and Union Colony Prep are tied for third in District 7 and they play on Thursday. As a result, Front Range gets the nod due to RPI. Calhan also earned the third spot by RPI over Dolores Huerta Prep.
Next in the process is to develop the seed order for the District champions as they will host a regional bracket. That order is determined by RPI and currently the numbers have our projected district winners in this order.
- Yuma
- Denver Christian
- Mancos
- Holly
- Sanford
- Meeker
- Heritage Christian
- Peyton
Our next step involves picking the eight at-large regional berths and again those selections are based on RPI.
- Lotus School
- Holyoke
- Rye
- Custer County
- Las Animas
- Golden View Classical
- Swallows Charter
- Del Norte
Please note that Lake County, Center, Akron and Union Colony Prep are the next four teams so they have plenty of play for over the final ten days of the season.
With our complete list of qualifiers selected, we can now place them in seed order. Again, district champs are 1-8 based on RPI with spots 9-32 then put in order by RPI.
- Yuma
- Denver Christian
- Mancos
- Holly
- Sanford
- Meeker
- Heritage Christian
- Peyton
- Limon
- Vail Mountain
- Wray
- Lotus School
- Thomas MacLaren
- Crowley County
- Fowler
- Holyoke
- Vail Christian
- Rye
- Byers
- Ignacio
- Cedaredge
- Wiggins
- Crested Butte
- Custer County
- Las Animas
- Golden View Classical
- Front Range Christian
- Swallows Charter
- Del Norte
- Calhan
- Lyons
- Monte Vista
Then the final step is to place the teams in the bracket by seed and the regional tournament shapes up in this manner. The eight regional winners would be then reseeded before the state tournament with head-to-head results and league standings also coming into play with RPI.
| REGION 1 | REGION 5 | |||
| #1 | Yuma | #5 | Sanford | |
| #32 | Monte Vista | #28 | Swallows Charter | |
| #16 | Holyoke | #12 | Lotus School | |
| #17 | Vail Christian | #21 | Cedaredge | |
| REGION 2 | REGION 6 | |||
| #2 | Denver Christian | #6 | Meeker | |
| #31 | Lyons | #27 | Front Range Christian | |
| #15 | Fowler | #11 | Wray | |
| #18 | Rye | #22 | Wiggins | |
| REGION 3 | REGION 7 | |||
| #3 | Mancos | #7 | Heritage Christian | |
| #30 | Calhan | #26 | Golden View Classical | |
| #14 | Crowley County | #10 | Vail Mountain | |
| #19 | Byers | #23 | Crested Butte | |
| REGION 4 | REGION 8 | |||
| #4 | Holly | #8 | Peyton | |
| #29 | Del Norte | #25 | Las Animas | |
| #13 | Thomas MacLaren | #9 | Limon | |
| #20 | Ignacio | #24 | Custer County | |
Now this is a true seed but there are a couple of issues with the pairings. The committee would like to avoid district pairings in the first round and then travel can also be considered for teams placed 25-32.
The concerns.
- REGION 2: Denver Christian & Lyons are league rivals paired up in round one – the same can be said for the Fowler/Rye matchup in the same bracket
- REGION 6: Wray and Wiggins are both from the Lower Platte so Wiggins would be moved up or down one spot to alleviate that meeting
- The committee could also flip Lyons & Monte Vista at #31-32 for travel purposes and the same for Del Norte and Calhan in spots #29-30.
Of course, the pairings will change quite a bit over the final days of the regular season and then district tournaments never end up as seeded all the way through. That will change the list of automatic qualifiers which could then upset the wildcard qualifiers as well. Our projects are just that – projections – and should not be considered official.
