Finally back with 5 Division talk

With the calender finally turning over to November I figured that it was time to start my high school basketball talk back up on the blog. To start the season off you should always start with the biggest issues affecting the sport and the biggest issue this year is the new five division look of Wisconsin high school basketball. Like it or hate we will be watching a very different set up the state tournament down in Madison this year. There will now be the five divisions with only four teams for each division being at state.

Pros
Allows the smaller schools equal representation at state. Each division has four teams unlike in the past when D1 would have eight teams.
Each division will have to play at least four games to get to state where in the past D1 teams may only play three games to get to Madison.
The smaller D1s will not being playing schools that are twice their size.
Higher fan attendance from schools participating due to the fact that the larger inner city schools don't bring as many fans.

Cons
Talent level will be watered down being that the larger schools will have less representation and typical they are the schools that have more talent.
Get one less game overall moving from 16 games to 15 games.
Less general fan attendance as far as fans that go for the games and don't necessarily have an affiliation with any of the schools.
Just gives private schools another division to win.
Teams feel a high sense of accomplishment winning in a higher division or being that there would be only four state champions.

My thoughts
My initial thoughts on the five divisions is that I was against it primarily for the fact that I really enjoy watching the division one games and watching the two final D1's playing three games. Looking at it a little closer though it appears that there will be a decent amount of D2s that had recently been at state as D1s and probably would have a good shot to make it to state anyway. The D2s include Wauwatosa East who won state three years ago for D1. Losing those four games I'm kind of 50/50 on. Many times those quarterfinal games are blow outs and you usually know whose going to win but, it has also been games that have provided lots of excitement in upsets the last couple years with Milwaukee Hamiliton and Washington losing but, also missing some great match ups like Oshkosh West over Germantown in OT and then five years ago when Madison Memorial survived Beloit in OT. The biggest downfall is that you now will only one team from the southeast, one from Madison Area, one Fox Valley Area, and then one northern team from Green Bay or Wausau Area. This year in particular will probably see Madison Memorial or Sun Prairie play a team from Milwaukee prior to getting to Madison which will be very disappointing not to see that game played at the Kohl center. This game will still be at UW Whitewater but, the casual fan will probably not make the trip to Whitewater unless they live in the general area.

The lower division were much less affected with the change other then things getting easier for the top teams who will probably only play four games to get to state. Most of the returning D2 state teams remain in D2 and will now face some tougher competition with the new D1s dropping down. D3 appears to be pretty strong with many of the usual suspects remaining in D3. D4 appears to be similar to D3 with the usual privates and Blair Taylor at the top. Initially D5 would be seen as being very weak but, actually all four D4s from last years state move down to D5 this year so talent wise should be similar to last years D4.

My biggest disappointment is the WIAA did not address the private school issue which has been the hot button debate for the last five to seven years. Instead of having the privates win two divisions like last year we may be seeing the privates take three divisions. The previous two D2 state champions where privates and remain in D2 while a D1 Milwaukee Pius moves down and they where at state just a couple years ago in D1 and through in some other good D2 privates. D3 has basically become the private school division and next year should be no different. D4 now has Eau Claire Regis who was at state last year and a very interesting Young Coggs Prep team that is a vastly different private school then we have ever seen before. Finally in D5 if Green Bay New Lutheran, who appears to be the top team coming into the season, can make a return trip back to state and win this time that would give you four of five possible private school state champs. I didn't even mention in D1 Milwaukee Marquette who was a final four D1 team a year ago and gave state champ Arrowhead a great game and return their top two players, we could possibly looking at a clean sweep by the privates. In reality it will probably end up being two private champs and they WIAA will feel that they have reached there goal because there will now be three public champs as opposed to last year with two.

To be completely honest the private issue isn't a huge deal to myself but, would just like to see all the bickering end between the two sides. I would like to see a multiplier to settle things of 1.5 which would pump the bigger private schools up a division while allowing the smaller privates to remain in the same division. I would of also like to of seen the four divisions remain and allow eight teams to reach state but, probably wasn't a realistic goal with the time restraints and location restraints being that WIAA had no interest to have two locations for state and these games would not be shown on tv. Well I'll be back in the next few days to discuss the other big issue in the exodus of Milwaukee City kids leaving for prep schools and then will move on to my preseason rankings.