We currently have 5 Regional Tournaments located in Indianapolis, Atlanta, Dallas, Omaha and Oklahoma City leading up to the National Tournament in Springfield Missouri March 14th-19th 2011
The Purpose of the Regional Tournaments is to assist the National Tournament Seeding Committee to help properly seed each team for the National Tournament in Springfield, MO. The Regional Tournaments are also the primary way to provide exposure for All-Region and All-American Candidates prior to the final ballot being cast by each Regional coach. Additionally the Regional Tournaments are designed to provide competitive tournaments leading up to the National Tournament.
Regional System designed to do the following for 18U:
1) Automatic bids for Division 1
2) All-Region Teams
3) Exposure for All-American Candidates
4) Guaranteed one of the eight #1 Seeds (For the Winner of each Regional Tournament)
5) Guaranteed All-American game participants (at least the top two voted players in each Region will be selected as 1st or 2nd team All-American)
6) Guaranteed Showcase game participants (at least the top 10 voted players from each Region will participate in Wednesday night's Showcase game at MSU)
The Benefits of attending your Regional Tournament include the following:
Each Region is assigned a set number of Division 1 Automatic Bids. The Regional Tournament will have significant impact on the overall National Tournament Seeding. There will be two main factors to determine the number of Division 1 Automatic Bids from each region. 1) Last years finish. (How many top 23 teams from last years National’s each Region has). 2) This years Strength of Region (We will use MaxPreps Rankings and our own rankings to help determine this factor).
The winner of each Regional Tournament is GUARANTEED a #1 seed in Division 1.
The top voted player for each region is guaranteed to play in the All-American game at the national tournament.
High School All-Americans will be voted on by region. Coaches from each region will cast ballots, but each coach will only be permitted to vote for players they watched play during the season. Obviously the better you do at the Regional Tournament the more likely your players will receive more exposure by playing in more marquee games/times therefore giving your players the best possible chance of receiving the votes they deserve. For the 2011 Regional Tournaments we have added another level of voting which will be explained to each High School coach attending a Regional Tournament.
There will be an additional High School Individual Awards Category, as an All Regional Team will be selected in addition to 1st & 2nd Team All-Americans.
Regional Tournaments will use three main criteria’s for the Seeding the top teams of each Region. 1) Last Years finish at National’s and Regional Tournaments 2) MaxPreps Rankings 3) Our own ranking system 4) Head to Head during the regular season.
For Nationals Seeding Purposes All head to head tie breakers will be broken by the highest finish at the Regional Tournament. Example two teams are 1-1 against each other, the highest Regional Tournament finisher is awarded the higher seed.
For Nationals All multi way tie breakers are broken by the finish at the Regional Tournament. This is very important because there is often a loop created with 3 teams( sometimes up to 6 teams) where teams all go 1-1 against each other or even sometimes much more difficult loops when a group of teams play a lot during the year.
Many tie breakers will be broken at Regional Tournaments when one team attends Regionals and another does not, the team that attends is awarded the higher seed because they finished higher at the Regional Tournament.
There will be JV and Junior High Tournaments at most Regional Tournaments. The games at the tournaments count as head to head games and tie breakers for head to head competition.