2019-2020 State Championship, Bernie vs. Hayti... IT COULD HAPPEN!

What's up JWT Fam. I wrote my article yesterday about the proposed MSHSAA Playoff Bracket and got like a million questions. I thought I'd do the Class 2 Boys Bracket, based off of this year's actual Class 2 Boys Basketball Bracket. I changed the bracket look so that it's easier to read, and I even drew arrows and colored circles for those of you that needed me to literally draw you a picture LOL.

QUICK RECAP... Hayti beat Bernie by 4 in the Class 2, District 1 championship game. That game could've have easily gone the other way. Those were two of the best teams in the state, with Hayti almost beating Van-Far in the state finals.

In this bracket, you have the District 1 Winner (Hayti) playing the District 2 Runner Up (St. Vincent). This game would be immediately followed by the District 2 Winner (Oran) vs. the District 1 Runner Up (Bernie). REMEMBER, the girls teams would be doing the exact same thing at this site. So in this make believe bracket, we'd have 2 girls games (4:00, 5:30 PM) followed by these 2 boys games (7:00, 8:30 PM). It would mean 8 teams, probably all 20+ win teams, fighting it out in one night.

It would be awesome.

I've illustrated this in the bracket. These games are in GRAY. They are at Site 1 (Bloomfield maybe). The same thing is going on at Site 2, Site 3, Site 4, all around the state. The winners would advance, but Bernie and Hayti wouldn't play again. The teams would "cross bracket" (see the arrows).

Hayti would play Thayer, and Bernie would play Hartville. NOTE: Like I said in the article yesterday, we could use Coach Matt Baker's RPI here or something like that. There could be a rule that a #1 seed (district winner) automatically plays a #2 seed (district runner up), as long as they're not from the same district. That would defeat the purpose of two "great teams" from the same district having a chance to advance in the playoffs.

In Round 2, there would be 4 boys teams and 4 girls teams at each site (Three Rivers College, Moberly College, Drury University, and Liberty North HS). There would be 2 girls games and 2 boys games. The winners of each game would advance to the Elite 8.

In our tournament, the Elite 8 would all advance to "STATE," the final weekend of the season, which would be played at Springfield. We would seed this bracket, using a combination of the coaches' votes, some kind of RPI and/or strength of schedule (Coach Matt Baker).

In this scenario, the 4 teams that made the Final Four in real life still made it in our make believe tournament. The only change is, 4 other really good teams (Bernie, Milan, Crocker, and Wellington-Napolean) also made it. And in this scenario, just for fun, WHAT IF you had a scenario where Bernie and Hayti both pulled off an upset and made it to the state finals?

What if this happened one year with Harrisburg and Fayette? Or what if it happened with Scott Central and Bell City? Or New Madrid and Charleston? Or Helias and Tolton? South Iron vs. Eminence? Hermann vs. South Calloway?

Or Chaminade vs. Webster Groves (wait, that really did just happen in real life LOL).

You get the idea. It's not going to happen very often, but WHAT IF every now and then, there were two GREAT TEAMS in the same district (Portageville and Bernie, 1993)? Those teams could conceivably meet at "State."

And if nothing else, the Round 1 (4 girls teams, 4 boys teams) would be a phenomenal atmosphere. The Round 2 (4 girls teams, 4 boys teams, with a shot to go to STATE on the line) would be amped up even more. And the final weekend of the season, we'd have 8 teams experiencing STATE. We'd have an incredible tournament that last weekend of the season.

It doubles the gate for MSHSAA. It doubles the opportunities for kids. It doubles the atmosphere and excitement for players and fans and coaches.

Share this 1,000 times. Maybe we can make it actually happen. Thanks for reading. #JWT