Three ways to make the state basketball tournaments better

Not that anyone asked me, but here's a look at three ways the IHSA can improve the state basketball tournament.

1. Rethink the regional process

Teams work all season to earn top sectional seeds, and in the past they were rewarded with postseason home games in the regional.

That all changed when the IHSA switched to base regional sites in the name of decreased travel. While that's an admirable goal in the more rural parts of the state, it's irrelevant in jam-packed Chicagoland.

Batavia, the top seed in the Class 4A East Aurora sectional, fell to No. 9 Bartlett in a regional final played at Bartlett. While it's very possible the Hawks would have won the game regardless, Batavia earned the right to have that game at home.

The Bulldogs certainly didn't deserve to play it on a hostile court.

It also seemed odd to have West Aurora and Neuqua Valley drive 20 or 30 miles past a dozen high schools before reaching their regional site in Villa Park. I'm still not sure how that benefited the travel process.

For the football playoffs in the fall, the IHSA used different bracketing systems in different classes. Where travel wasn't an issue, like in Class 8A, the IHSA had two brackets of 16 teams. Where travel was more of an issue, the IHSA created smaller regional quadrants of eight teams.

Perhaps the IHSA could do something similar with basketball and allow Chicagoland's top seeds to return to hosting regional games. Other areas of the state could stick with regional sites to decrease travel.

2. Ditch the third-place game

In the days of the two-class system, the third-place game was harmless. The teams that lost the Saturday morning semifinal games came back early that evening for one last hurrah.

In the first year of the four-class system, the third-place game has become an oddity. The loser of today's Class 1A semifinal at noon has to find something to do the rest of the day, spend the night in Peoria and then play an 11 a.m. third-place game on Saturday.

Is it really necessary to make all those players, coaches and fans spend Friday night in hotels to play for the difference between a third- and fourth-place trophy?

Instead, how about avoiding the hassles and just giving all of today's semifinal losers a semifinalist trophy?

As a sidenote regarding the four-class system, kudos to the IHSA for no longer making teams play two games in one day. It never seemed fair to force teams to win their two biggest games -- the semifinal and the final -- both within a matter of hours.

3. "And-one"

Bear with me -- this is where it gets quirky.

How about extending the season by a week and bringing all four state champions back to Peoria for a winner-take-all weekend?

You could have the Class 1A champion play the 2A champion, and the 3A champion play the 4A champion.

The winners of those games could come back the next day to play each other and determine "The King of the Hill" in Illinois.

OK, so maybe it's a little too far out in left field. The logistics would be brutal, the season's too long as it is.

But, hey, it'd sure be cool to watch.