Class A playoff draw: #1 North Cobb Christian vs. #2 Whitefield in second round? Wesleyan’s loss to St. Francis puts suspense in girls tournament
Wesleyan can win a sixth straight state championship in girls basketball this season, but it won’t happen as a No. 1 seed. The Lady Wolves lost to St. Francis in the Region 6-A final on Saturday. That just means Wesleyan enters the state tournament as a No. 2 seed.
Meanwhile, in the boys draw, No. 1-ranked North Cobb Christian is seeded to play No. 2 Whitefield Academy in the second round. Class A has nine regions instead of the eight that other classes have. That means two region champs must meet in Round 2. It just so happens that those two are the top two teams in the state, both from Cobb County.
Here are the opening-round matchups. Let us know if we’ve got any teams out of order. The GHSA has not announced the official draw.
CLASS A
BOYS
Preliminary games
Game A: R5#4 Wesleyan at R9#3 Greenforest
Game B: R8#4 Commerce at R6#3 Gordon Lee
Game C: R7#4 Lincoln County at R8#3 Hebron Christian
Game D: R6#4 Trion vs. R9#4 W.D. Mohammed
First round
R4#4 Central-Talbotton at R3#1 Portal
R2#3 Turner County at R1#2 Calhoun County
R3#4 Wheeler County at R4#1 Taylor County
R1#3 Randolph-Clay at R2#2 Wilcox County
R7#3 Hancock Central at R8#1 Athens Christian
Game A winner at R6#2 Mount Paran Christian
Game B winner at R7#1 Wilkinson County
R5#2 Providence Christian vs. R9#2 Landmark Christian (site TBA)
R2#4 Atkinson County at R1#1 Mitchell County
R4#3 Greenville at R3#2 Claxton
R1#4 Pelham at R2#1 Lanier County
R3#3 Jenkins County at R4#2 Hawkinsville
R5#3 St. Francis at R6#1 North Cobb Christian
Game C winner at R9#1 Whitefield Academy
Game D winner at R5#1 Mount Pisgah Christian
R8#2 Lakeview Christian vs. R7#2 Aquinas (site TBA)
GIRLS
Preliminary games:
Game A: R5#4 Holy Innocents’ at R9#3 Greenforest Christian or Strong Rock Christian
Game B: R8#4 Athens Academy at R6#3 Bremen
Game C: R7#4 Washington-Wilkes at R8#3 Lakeview Academy
Game D: R6#4 Trion vs. Greenforest Christian or Strong Rock Christian
First round
R4#4 Greenville at R3#1 Calvary Day
R2#3 Turner County at R1#2 Pelham
R3#4 Bryan County at R4#1 Taylor County
R1#3 Randolph-Clay at R2#2 Wilcox County
R7#3 Georgia Military College at R8#1 Towns County
Game A winner at R6#2 Darlington
Game B winner at R7#1 Wilkinson County
R9#2 Paideia at R5#2 Wesleyan
R2#4 Echols County at R1#1 Mitchell County
R4#3 Marion County at R3#2 Claxton
R1#4 Seminole County at R2#1 Charlton County
R3#3 Savannah Country Day at R4#2 Dooly County
R5#3 Pace Academy at R6#1 Gordon Lee
Game C winner at R9#1 SW Atlanta Christian
Game D winner at R5#1 St. Francis
R8#2 George Walton Academy vs. R7#2 Hancock Central (site TBA)
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41 comments Add your comment
HSbball Fan
February 19th, 2012
4:47 pm
Why is #1 North Cobb Christian potentially facing #2 Whitefield in the SECOND round of the state playoffs?? This happened a few years back in AAAAA with Wheeler and Norcross. Rather than separating A private and public schools (which is a cure that’s much worse than the illness) maybe the GHSA should spend more ample brain power figuring out a way to seed teams that doesn’t involve having the two best squads in the state playing each other in the second round of the playoffs. But I’m just saying…
Central Georgia Fever
February 19th, 2012
6:49 pm
Good luck Taylor and Dooly County!!!
Todd Holcomb
February 19th, 2012
6:51 pm
HSbball Fan – That is pretty amazing. I like Whitefield in that game, fwiw.
Chris
February 19th, 2012
8:06 pm
HS fan and Todd, I know that with GHSA splitting as they are, there are proposals being prepared to create power ranking systems that are very effective in predicting seeds accordingly. Louisiana uses a similar model and I have done some work in seeing how it works in baseball and other sports. I wouldn’t be suprised to see that in the near future.
Seth Vining
February 19th, 2012
8:23 pm
The site of the Lakeview – Aquinas game has not been set. Both are #2 seeds and a meeting and coin toss has to be scheduled.
Kenneth Barton
February 19th, 2012
10:07 pm
Should be a great game–just hope the ref’s are better than last years game–they were the most biased refs I have ever witnessed in 30 years of basketball. Hopefully those refs lost their licenses’. GHSA should be ashamed of hiring anyone that would not call a “fair” game
Also, in that same brackett there are 10 teams 8 of the 10 teams are private/Christian schools—kinda lessens the chance that a private/christian school will come out as State champ since all but 1 will be eliminated by the final four brackett—of the eight teams 6 are ranked in the state top 15
B BALL FAN
February 19th, 2012
10:18 pm
It is crazy that #1 and #2 have to play each other in the second round. It should be a great game if they can both get by the first round. I will take NCCS in that game. NCCS is so balanced that any night all 5 starters can beat you. Whitefield always has a great team, so should be a great game.
Max Sizemore
February 20th, 2012
8:32 am
The GHSA draws up its brackets before the season begins to forestall allegations of favoritism. And, from year to year, it rotates regions. So if the top two ranked teams meet in the second round, that’s the breaks. It is not a perfect system, but it is fair.
Happens Occassionally
February 20th, 2012
9:23 am
It happened in baseball in 2010 when Weslyan#2 and Landmark #1 faced each other in the 2nd round. They were by far the best 2 teams in the state and everyone knew that the winner of that series was going to win it all. Sure enough, Weslyan rolled to a championship after beating Landmark in 3 games. I hate that the brackets break down this way and wish that there was a better way of determining seeds at the end of the season rather than at the start.
coughsalot
February 20th, 2012
9:41 am
St. Francis girls are what’s wrong with high school athletics in Georgia.
William Casey
February 20th, 2012
10:01 am
I’m rather ignorant about the St. Francis program. What makes them “what’s wrong with athletics?”
athensbball
February 20th, 2012
11:02 am
Whats not fair about the GHSA state bracket…and why you have two #1’s playing in the second round…is that it looks like they took 5 minutes to create it. There are 9 regions (which is dumb to have an odd number to begin with) so instead of having “play-in games” for all of the regions…there are only play in games for regions 5-9. Its like they started making the bracket for the top half (1 plays 4 and 2 plays 3) and then half way through it they were like “Oh yeah!!! we have 9 regions…guess we will just make play-in games for the bottom half of the bracket to even it out”. Brilliant!
Kenneth Barton
February 20th, 2012
11:39 am
Max, the GHSA didnt too much for this years bracket–it is almost identical to the 2011 bracket, at least in this particular section of the bracket–as far as the GHSA changing it every year–someone forgot to change it this year,it appears they took the quick way out
B BALL FAN
February 20th, 2012
12:54 pm
The bracket is not identical to last year. Last year North Cobb Christian, and Whitefield were both region champs. They did not play until the Quarter-finals. Even with 9 regions there is a better way to do the brackets. Having region champs opening with a 3 seed instead of a 4 is stupid. The only problem I have with it, is that the game should be on a neutral court. Neither team deserves to have the advantage of having home court in that match-up.
atw1974
February 20th, 2012
1:30 pm
A #1 and #2 seeded team should not meet until the championship game if they were to win all their games. Does anyone not watch college basketball? This is terrible. The second round will be a great game if both win in the first round, but one that should be played at the championship level- not the second game. The problem is that the opposite side of the tournament might have an inferior team in the State championship game without having gone through one of the top two teams. Just dumb!
MtnMama
February 20th, 2012
1:45 pm
Thankfully NEXT year, these problems won’t be an issue within Class A…since the GHSA has FINALLY figured out that they need to separate Public & Private schools when it comes to tournament play…not just in basketball, but in all sports. It took the very real threat of 30+ class A public schools planning to pull out of the GHSA in protest to get the attention of the “powers”…but finally…better late than never, they woke up and came up with a solution. Hopefully they will also resolve the issue of the odd # of Regions in Class A at the same time.
athensbball
February 20th, 2012
1:47 pm
@atw1974: You are correct that the bracket is awful and was not well thought out at all since only half of the bracket has play-in games, but you can NOT compare it to college basketball. College basketball has 4 number one seeds and 64 teams….both even numbers. Class-A has 36 teams and 9 different #1 seeds making it impossible for them to only meet in the Final 4.
athensbball
February 20th, 2012
1:50 pm
@mtnmama: They already solved the odd number of regions. There will be 8 next year. That was decided before the whole private school/public school split. But if you think it will be better than your wrong. They are not splitting up the regions into private and public schools so next year’s basketball region tournaments are going to be a disaster!! Private schools will be competing against public schools for the right to go to their own respective….and seperate… tournaments. So dumb!!!
coughsalot
February 20th, 2012
5:19 pm
To William Casey: To answer your question, what’s wrong with St. Francis girls is that their entire team…well at least anyone that actually and scores, is comprised of transfers from other schools. This coach showed up 3 seasons ago and has brought in 4-5 transfers each season. That’s about 15 transfers over three years! And they’re all top notch players, not role players. The GHSA just allows this and has too many loopholes in it’s transfer policy. Regardless, this coach doesn’t put in the work to build a program, she simply plucks the best players off of various teams from around the metro area and puts together an All Star team.
athensbball
February 20th, 2012
6:14 pm
@coughsalot: It’s not that there are so many “loopholes” its just there is no way to police it and no way of knowing who is transferring “legally”. The problem is that probably 95% of kids transfer schools because their parents or the kid wants to go to that school or because they want to play for that coach….it’s the 5% that actually recruit players that give a bad rap for schools and for coaches who are not doing anything wrong.
David pugh
February 20th, 2012
10:58 pm
NCC has played a bunch of nobodies and this years game will be just like the last time NCC and Whitefield played ….a blow out…….look ay who white field has played…..good grief 5a ranked schools.
B BALL FAN
February 20th, 2012
11:34 pm
Whitefield has played a better schedule that is no debate. I would think Whitefield is the favorite in the game, but it will not be like last year. This NCC team is much better than last years team. They lost by 30 last year to McCallie Academy in Tn, and beat them this year. So last years games do not really mean much.
coughsalot
February 21st, 2012
2:01 pm
@athensbball: I get what you’re saying. It’s understood that parents probably send their kids to a guys like David Boyd at Milton or Doug Lipscomb at Wheeler without those coaches actively pursuing them as those coaches are known and have had much success. In the case of the St. Francis girls however that the coach or her assistants are actively recruiting. That team had come off a 6-win season and was an unknown obsure tiny private school. Then she’s hired and they get five transfers her first season? Then five more the next and five more the next? Why weren’t all of these kids attacted to St. Francis before she arrived? Certainly not excusing the amount of transfers Boyd and Lipscomb get, but this is not even close to the same thing. Frankly, if the GHSA simply said that a kid must sit out a year unless they are transferring from a school that is at least 100 miles away from the school they want to transfer to, all of this cross town transferring would stop….and St. Francis would be what they were before they imported an entire new team.
Simple Simon
February 21st, 2012
3:15 pm
They would be like all the Private Schools. ALL PRIVATE SCHOOLS RECRUIT FACE IT. Lets say private schools are whats wrong with Highschool sports!..Wesylan does the same thing, GAC, etc … All the private schools recruit!! Thats why they should have their own class to compete in..Caughsalot is probably mad because Wesylan lost Region to St.Francis but to be real the only way any of these private schools and Buford can compete with public schools is to recruit the better talent from the public schools or steal them when they are in Middle School from other feeder programs like Wesylan likes to do is doing(Stephenson Middle)..You really think they win due to the coaching? lol Half of Wesylan’s team is from Dekalb County and attended Dekalb County Middle schools..I’m pretty sure the future teams will be full of kids from Dekalb, even the big girl at Buford that came from GAC is actually from Green Forrest in Decatur!! Private schools should compete with schools who have the same advantage’s they have. Imagine St.piux, St.Francis, Wesylan, GAC, Lovett, SACA, Marist, Woodward etc.. all in the same region! that would be cool! then you can have the private school champs play the public school champs from a class! Thats would be cool! At least if the private schools all competed agianst themselves there would be no one complaining about cheating and recruiting since we know they would never do anything like that..that only takes place when they play public schools and lose! Right?lol
atw1974
February 21st, 2012
7:21 pm
athensbball: the comparison is to ANY tournament that even a elementary AD could set up. You don’t put #1 and #2 in the state on the same side of the bracket. It is a very easy fix, all they had to do is switch two teams. Not a big deal for the integrity of a tournament. I could set up elementary intramural games better than this. GHSA is a mess. It is as bad as having the Girls state track meet at some run down place (sorry Albany!) instead of a marquee place like GA Tech or UGA!
athensbball
February 22nd, 2012
11:09 am
@simplesimon: ALL private schools recruit? That’s a bold statement. There are some private schools in region 8A that have never even made the state tournament. Must have a terrible recruiting coordinator if ALL private schools recruit as you say. And you dont think that PUBLIC schools recruit?? Milton has 3 players this year nominated for the McDonalds All-American team and Milton is a PUBLIC school!! Most coaches wont have 1 MD All-American in their lifetime and Milton just happens to have 3 in the same year. Do you honestly think they all grew up together? I seriously doubt it. It’s not so much the coaches thats the problem its the AAU leagues. Colleges rarely even recruit at high schools anymore they just go watch AAU tournaments. Then these kids get together from the AAU circuit and wanna play together in high school too. You cant stop it by crying about it you just gotta hope that u have a good coach that these kids will wanna move in and play for. High school baketball aint the “Hoosiers” of the old days where kids who grew up together also play together. And if you think that its going to go back to that than your just not being realistic
Todd Holcomb
February 22nd, 2012
11:59 am
”the comparison is to ANY tournament that even a elementary AD could set up. You don’t put #1 and #2 in the state on the same side of the bracket. It is a very easy fix, all they had to do is switch two teams.”
The current format is what the schools and coaches want. They want something that’s objective. They don’t want a vote of coaches or the media to determine who is on opposite sides of the bracket. Can you imagine the charges of bias and politics in a system like that? It won’t work.
athensbball
February 22nd, 2012
12:34 pm
@atw1974: “you don’t put a #1 and #2 on the same side of the bracket” You HAVE to! There is no way around it. You can not compare this to any other championship format. There are NINE…count them…NINE #1 seeds and NINE #2 seeds. Therefore, unless you wanna have NINE different brackets numbering them 1-9 (which is impossible because that’s an odd number and there is no unbiased way to seed them) there is no way around a #1 and a #2 being in the same bracket.
tree
February 23rd, 2012
4:48 am
good luck PELHAM
atw1974
February 23rd, 2012
2:15 pm
You actually don’t “have” to put the top two teams on the same side. You simply switch two teams so 1 and 2 are not on the same side of the tournament, not reorder the entire tournament. Besides there is always politics involved. Secondly, if the top ten poll doesn’t matter, then I guess reading the AJC is worthless. They shouldn’t have a poll nor should they post a blog about #1 vs #2 in the second round. It is just two random teams that are good playing each other who happen to be from the same county. I am not saying to change the whole system but there has to be some leeway so what is considered to be the two best teams are not playing each other so soon.
athesbball
February 23rd, 2012
3:17 pm
@atw1974: You are absolutely correct…the polls are completely meaningless. So its actually just two #1 seeds playing in the second round…the fact that the AJC has them ranked #1 and #2 in the state is only an opinion. Many could argue that North Cobb hasnt played anyone. Im biased, because I’m from Athens, but I could argue that Athens Christian deserves to be #1 overall. They are 26-2 (10-0) winning their games by an average of 30 points per game. They beat the 8AAAA Region champion by 30 and beat 8AAAA Region Runner-up twice. Their only 2 losses were in a holiday tournament and were without their best player for one of them. They have a freshman guard thats ranked in the top ten in the country and a 6′8 center that just broke the all-time GHSA rebounding and block shots for a career (Record was for All Classifications). Point is….rankings are meaningless…to win it all you gotta play everyone at somepoint.
atw1974
February 23rd, 2012
10:28 pm
6A Region is pretty weak in basketball however, NCCS did play and beat the #1 team in Tennessee the other week. They also beat some non-A team from Cobb County in the beginning of the season, by a significant margin. It will definitely be interesting to see what happens. Hope NCCS meets Athens in the tournament!
athensbball
February 24th, 2012
10:58 am
BREAKING NEWS: Defending Class-A State Champion, Wilcox County, forfits their 1st round game
athensbball
February 24th, 2012
11:33 am
correction: Wilcox was in Final Four last year
HSbball Fan
February 25th, 2012
9:49 am
I love it gentlemen. Opinions don’t matter this time of year. We could go deeper athensbball. Athens Christian has twice barely managed to get by a pretty good Lakeview team. NCCS blew out Lakeview by 25. But guess what? None of that matters now. #1 playing #2 in round 2 makes no sense, but it’s a moot point for now I guess. Let’s sit back and enjoy the show!
athensbball
February 25th, 2012
11:26 am
Your right that opinions dont matter at this point…but when NCCS played Lakeview it was the first game of the year for Lakeview and half of their guys were still playing football. Lakeview is not the same team now as they were then.
athensbball
February 25th, 2012
11:30 am
And you must have never seen a game at Lakeview before…the refs their are a part of the Mountain Association up in podunk Gainesville and they cheat so bad its laughable! The refs pick out the best players and get them into foul trouble immedietly. Before the game you can see the refs chumming it up with Lakeview’s coach’s and AD. ACS had to play Lakeview @ Lakeview both times. I feel sorry for Aquinas who plays Lakeview the first round of state at their place. This is not an exaggeration, and Aquinas may still beat Lakeview, but if they played at a neutral site, Lakeview would be 20 points worse without the refs help.
HSbball Fan
February 25th, 2012
1:19 pm
The Lakeview football season ended on October 28th. NCCS played Lakeview in basketball on November 18th. But I don’t want to start an argument about it. I just hope to see both teams settle it on the court on March 10th in the championship game. But there are a lot of good teams in the way of that hapening. I would love to see your boys against Mt. Paran (if Mt. Paran can get past Wesleyan). They are a pretty good squad as well (ranked for most of the year in the top 10 of the coaches and AJC poll – again, not that this matters this time of year) and NCCS beat them recently by 25. Settle it on the court! Good luck to all teams!
tj
February 25th, 2012
8:34 pm
st francis 63 ncc 61.
whitefield 65 hebron christian 13
st francis vs whitefield in 2nd round
Jon Waller
February 25th, 2012
8:39 pm
Thanks for ignoring St. Francis. It helped the boys prepare for their upset of North Cobb tonight. I am sure Whitfield will beat us too! THANKS AGAIN! GO KNIGHTS!
JonWallerIsAGayboy
February 26th, 2012
10:28 am
Sorry Waller. While y’all can beat a team with an inflated ranking, you cant complete with a team that actually schedules schools that are bigger. Save your 7 dollars and go ahead and get ready for girls soccer season.
-Go Pack