Leading off today: Kudos to James Allen of
The Times Union for
calling out Section 2 today over the way it seeds its tournaments in baseball and several other sports.
For those not familiar with the format, Section 2 seeds its 15-team Class AA bracket in such a way so as to avoid having the eight Suburban Council and six Big 10 members face rematches with league members in the first round.
Such a contrived method fails to take into account that one league could be vastly superior to the other, creating quirks in which the two best teams in the section end up playing each other in the semifinals rather than the final.
In addition, they need to be mindful that pitching is at least 80 percent of high school baseball and the fact that the ace generally can't throw on less than three or four days of rest. A 15-team bracket means only the No. 1 seed gets the advantage of a first-round bye, so they had better be darned sure the honor is awarded on merit.
Allen points to flaws in the system that have been apparent in other sports -- such as when Catholic Central went 40-0 in girls soccer games vs. fellow Big 10 schools yet couldn't get past low-seeded Suburban Council teams despite the home-field advantage.
Section 2 softball does not use the Big 10/Suburban Council split-seeding format. Suburban Council schools have shown their superiority with 21 straight large-school championships.
It's time for the Capital region to start using seeding points or some other seeding system that treats teams in a more fair fashion.
Having said that ... I'm not going to claim seeding points or other ways of constructing tournament fields are perfect. If they were, 16th-seeded Lewiston-Porter probably wouldn't have beaten No. 1 Iroquois in the Section 6 Class A baseball tournament yesterday.
Alex Nelson each went 2-for-4 and drove in three runs in the 9-6 triumph for Lew-Port, which got a seven-hitter from Jake Janeczko, who struck out four.
