The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly from This Year's MSHSAA Final Four
- Coach David Heeb
- Mar 11, 2018
- 6 min read
What a weekend of basketball. I went to the Final Four with my daughter Lani, my son Trey, my brother Toby, and his wife Brooke. We rented out an entire apartment in downtown Springfield. We went to the mall and ate concession stand food and stayed up too late and went sight seeing and we also watched a whole lot of basketball.
Basically, it was like three days of Heaven.
Now for the good, the bad, and the ugly of this year's Class 1-3 MSHSAA Final Four...
The Good
First of all, congratulations to Eminence (Class 1 Boys), Mound City with Craig (a Co-Op, Class 1 Girls), Van-Far (Class 2 Boys), Neelyville (Class 2 Girls), Hogan Prep (Class 3 Boys), and Strafford (Class 3 Girls) on winning state titles.
For Eminence, they finish 32-1 after losing their first game of the season, meaning they won 32 in a row. This team was fun to watch. They passed it well, They played smart. They were fun to watch.
Mound City (with Craig), in my opinion, is the first in a new wave we're going to see of Class 1 Co-op Champions, especially on the girls side. As more and more Class 1b (really small Class 1) schools start to Co-op together, you're going to see this more and more where they put together a great team. Mound City is really good, and deserved to win. They were head and shoulders better than every Class 1 girls team in Springfield this weekend.
Van-Far stole victory from the jaws of defeat. Down 8 with less than 2 minutes to play, they put together a comeback that folks in those parts will be telling their grandchildren about. As a person rooting for Hayti, because I'm from that area and know their coach, it was tough to swallow. If Hayti could have found a way to make one more play, make one more free throw, cut out one turnover, grab one more rebound... but rather than dwelling on that, let's give credit to Van-Far. They were never ranked this season. They came out of nowhere. They found a way ton win the whole thing, and it was impressive to watch.
Neelyville had a great team last year, brought those players plus one back this year, and just simply overwhelmed the entire Class 2 field. I'm telling you, Oran, Skyline, and Mid-Buchanan are good! Neelyville is something past that, better than good. Those girls can flat out play.
In Class 3, first of all, I was so glad the first day they played over in the Hammonds Student Center. I'd be all for the entire state tournament being there. The atmosphere in that building was better than anything I've seen at the Final Four in years! More on that in a moment. But Hogan Prep had a heckuva good team. They deserved to win. The state title game itself??? More on that in a minute.
Finally, what can you say about a team that's won 3 state titles and 82 games in a row that hasn't already been said? Strafford is just an amazing team, and they have everybody coming back. They have a shot to win over 100 games and 4 state titles in a row. They move the ball and they make shots. They hustle. They're smart. They're just really fun to watch play.
While we're still talking about the good, kudos to MSHSAA for pulling off the change from Columbia to Springfield. The venues were side by side, like walking out one door into another one. That was awesome. The Hammonds Student Center was just AWESOME in terms of game atmosphere. The JHQ Arena, when it was full for the Class 1 Boys Finals and Class 3 Girls Finals, was awesome. The atmosphere was like being at the Show-Me Center or the Sikeston Field House when it's sold out. It was awesome. The parking was also great!! All in all, I would say it was an overwhelming success moving the Final 4 to Springfield.
The Bad
The concession stand lines were awful. If you wanted some popcorn, you better go get that in the 3rd quarter of the game before yours. I'm not kidding. We got in a line for some food. It was during warmups of the Class 1 State Finals. So after 15 minutes of warmups, the hype video that lasted 3-4 minutes, the national anthem, and the starting lineups... 25-30 minutes later... we finally got our food. It was unbelievable.
Simple suggestion: have more than 2 concession stands. I know it sounds crazy, but people hate waiting in line for 30 minutes for a bag of popcorn and a Coke.
Another thing I'd like to point out, and this wasn't just me saying this... I heard from so many people how Google and Apple Maps would reroute you, have you drive half a mile one way just to make a U Turn, etc. There is just so much road work going on in Springfield that even the Google Maps got confused. Maybe, just maybe have your roads fixed if you're trying to have thousands of tourists come to your city.
One more bad thing, and this might be nitpicking, was that the crowds weren't bigger for most of the games. When the Southwest Missouri teams or the teams from that general area were playing (Walnut Grove, Strafford, Moutain Grove, etc), the crowds were huge. When they weren't, it was about the same as Columbia.
That's not saying Van-Far didn't travel well (they did, huge crowd), or Charleston or Hayti or several other teams, but I still think MSHSAA would be better served by eliminating the 3rd place game. I think the crowds would be bigger, and the total profit margin (expenses vs. revenue) would be better if they did this.
The Ugly
I've been saying this and saying this and saying this... I don't understand why MSHSAA evaluates the officials at halftime during the Final Four. I've talked with officials who work the Final Four, and the stories they tell about getting absolutely RIPPED at halftime of a game, it's just silly to think that this actually happens, but it does.
As a coach, all I can ever ask an official to do is be consistent. Just call it how you're going to call it, and communicate with me, and then be consistent all night.
So when my team is playing in the biggest game of their lives, how can you do that to my players? How can you call the game one half one way, and then in the third quarter, it's like the same three officials were abducted by Body Snatchers or something?
This is what happened during the Class 3 Boys State Finals.
Charleston was ahead 26-20 at the half. Honestly the score could have been 26-20 the other way. Hogan Prep was really good, and I even said prior to the game, this game could go either way. Hogan Prep ended up winning this game, and they are a worthy champion. So I want to say this emphatically, Charleston did not get "cheated."
What happened was in the first half, both teams played really good defense. Neither team had any major foul trouble to speak of, maybe one starter each. There wasn't any "physical play" or anything dirty going on. It was just a good, hard fought game. Demarcus Sharp got red hot right before the half to give Charleston a lead, or like I said, the score might have been flipped the other way in Hogan Prep's favor.
Then in the third quarter, inexplicably, there were 17 fouls called in about 5 minutes of action. It was split almost even (9 against Charleston and 8 against Hogan Prep), but Charleston was whistled for 7 team fouls in less than 4 minutes. This meant that Hogan Prep, with their two jet quick guards, would be in the bonus for the last 12+ minutes of the game.
Again, give credit to Hogan Prep. They took advantage of those whistles. After being locked up and held to 20 in the first half, they scored 43 in the second half. A lot of that was due to the fact that (a) they got to the free throw line a lot; and (b) they got layups because Charleston had to just get out of the way.
As a fan of the game, and somebody who paid $27 for me and my two kids to get into the game, I felt so cheated watching so many whistles in the second half. ESPECIALLY after the game wasn't called that way AT ALL in the first half. I wanted to see which team was better. Maybe Hogan Prep was the better team? We just don't know, because we really only got to watch a half of basketball. The second half? That was not basketball, but rather a game marred by way too many whistles.
In closing, I've never been to a state tournament that I thought was perfect, but I love going every year. The folks at MSHSAA work really hard and do a great job putting on a good tournament every year. I think it's okay if fans suggest that a few things can be better.
The biggest thing I'd like to see changed is (1) get rid of 3rd place, which would allow for all kinds of new ideas for a change in the state tournament format; (2) stop this silly evaluation of officials at the Final Four, and maybe even consider bringing in 3 man crews that worked together all year for some continuity; and (3) fix those dang concession stand lines LOL.
Thanks for reading. Good luck to all the Class 4 and 5 teams making that same trip to Springfield next weekend. #JWT
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