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http://www.omniture.com --> Mail Tribune Blogs --> --> « The Snow Mutants of Medford ‘As You Like It’ misses the mark » Bring back seeding Posted by Don Hunt Can you imagine the NCAA tournamnent committee randomly sprinkling teams into the playoff bracket on Selection Sunday, with no regard to seeding? If that happened, you inevitably would have a first-round matchup of say, No. 1-ranked Wisconsin against No. 5 North Carolina. Wouldn’t that be preposterous? Seeding, or ranking teams based on records, strength of schedule and other factors, is implemented to insulate top-tier teams from having to play other heavyweights in the early rounds. Theoretically, the higher seeds — the better teams — move through the bracket and don’t square off against one another until the Sweet 16 and beyond. Of course there are upsets, and that’s part of the beauty of the Big Dance. Still, seeding is a logical and largely fair distribution system, and it needs to be incorporated into the state playoffs in Oregon high school basketball. Much has been made of Oregon City, currently ranked No. 6 in the Class 6A state poll, facing a likely trip to No. 2 South Medford in the play-in game to the state tournament. The Pioneers, who have been ranked as high as No. 3, finished second to No. 1-ranked Lake Oswego in the Three Rivers League. In a seeding scenario, they wouldn’t be matched up against South Medford unless the two teams met in Eugene, site of the final eight. A closer look at the 6A bracket finds not only South Medford and Oregon City on the lower half of the 24-team bracket, but also No. 4 Canby, No. 8 Central Catholic and No. 9 Canby. That’s five teams in the top nine. On the opposite side, only three such teams — No. 1 Lake Oswego, No. 5 Sheldon and No. 7 Westview — reside. The Oregon School Activities Association seeded the tournament once — in 2002 — only to abandon it after attendance hit an all-time low. That was a coincidence. Seeding is common sense, and it needs to come back for the 2007-2008 season. This entry was posted on Friday, February 23rd, 2007 at 5:35 pm and is filed under Sports Insiders . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response , or trackback from your own site. Leave a Reply Mail Tribune Blogs is proudly powered by WordPress Entries (RSS) and Comments (RSS) .