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BENNETT'S MINUTES: WIC structural flaws have no easy solutions
The Western Indiana Conference basketball crossover playoffs took place last month, and there has been a lot of speculation about how the format matching teams from opposite divisions against each other needs some revising.
The biggest problem in all sports in which the WIC does crossover games (football, soccer, tennis, basketball, baseball and softball) is the impossibility of having an equal amount of talent in each division. When one division dominates the other, which has happened quite often in the three-year history of the 12-team WIC, the crossover results are not valid in determining an accurate ranking of teams in the final conference standings.
In girls’ basketball, there wasn’t much debate this year about the best team – as Owen Valley dominated all six WIC games it played (five divisional games and the championship game). The East Division won four of the other five crossover games, with South Putnam’s win over Cascade the only West crossover victory.
Cloverdale finished fourth in the East and won its crossover, finishing seventh overall. Yet the Clovers had beaten both Greencastle (second place) and Northview (fourth place) in the regular season.
On the boys’ side, Edgewood continued to dominate the conference standings with its third straight league title. The other crossovers were a little more evenly-matched, with the East holding a 4-2 advantage.
Greencastle beat Indian Creek in the third-place game, while West Vigo beat Brown County in the 11th- place game for the only two West victories.
A three-way tie atop the East Division standings was solved by defensive scoring average in games among tied teams. Edgewood wound up first, while Indian Creek was second and Cloverdale was third. As a result, Cloverdale played Northview for fifth place despite having beaten both of the teams battling for third place.
Several people at Cloverdale were questioning that fact.
The tiebreaker definitely favors teams who not only play good defense, but also who play in low-scoring games. That system sure isn’t going to do Cloverdale any favors, considering the fast-paced style with more possessions per game that the Clovers utilize more than most WIC teams.
Sadly, there doesn’t seem to be a better way. To make it be offensive scoring average, or winning margin, encourages teams to run up the score on other teams.
I hardly think any team would adjust its game strategy just to win the uncertain prospect of a three-team tiebreaker, and this seems to be something which everyone will have to live with.
Another idea I heard brought up is the prospect of having a conference tourney. I heard rumblings last year about the possibility of there being “pods” created, with the top two teams in each division playing a four-game tourney amongst themselves to decide the order of finish from one through four. The third- and fourth-place teams would do the same for determining the order of finish from five through eight, and the fifth- and sixth-place teams would do the same for nine through 12.
I can see benefits here, but there would be bad points as well. Such a format wouldn’t have helped Cloverdale’s boys this year, because they would have still been playing for fifth place at best. I also considered the possibility of having the top eight teams to play a tourney, and the bottom four to play a separate tourney. Still, you get into the number of games that each school would have to block off on its schedule prior to the season without knowing whether it would be playing two or three games in such a conference tourney.
Another option I heard was for all 12 conference teams to play all of the other league teams in a full round robin. This would definitely create a more valid order of finish, but the logistics would be bad. The point of having divisions is to allow schools to play the most games possible against their closest neighbors.
For teams in the geographic center of the conference – namely Owen Valley, Edgewood, Northview, South Putnam, Greencastle and Cloverdale – such a change wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Most of them already play each other in most sports any way.
However, requiring more distant league members such as Cascade, North Putnam, Indian Creek, Brown County, West Vigo and Sullivan to play each other in the regular season in every sport would necessitate an increase in the heavy travel that divisional structures are intended to avoid.
So after all this analysis, what is the solution to the valid issues that have been presented?
There doesn’t seem to be a good one.
Another possibility I have heard posed is the reduction of the conference to eight teams. No school would likely go on the record and say it wants to leave the conference, but I have heard unofficial chatter that Cascade would prefer to be in a conference more geographically friendly to the Indianapolis suburban area. Maybe something like the Indiana Crossroads Conference, which Monrovia joined a few years ago. That league currently has eight teams, however, and no one intentionally wants to create a conference with an odd number of teams.
Greencastle should, and will, stay put. The Tiger Cubs have probably outperformed their status as the eighth-biggest school in the league and are in a perfect spot for them.
As for the others such as Cloverdale, South Putnam and North Putnam, I have heard some of their coaches ponder off the record whether being in the 12-team WIC competing against teams with such superior enrollments is a good idea.
Some teams – such as Greencastle football, Cloverdale basketball, South Putnam football this year and Eagle girls’ basketball the past two years – could point to improving through the rough schedules of the WIC and having post-season tourney success.
Those success stories haven’t been plentiful over the past couple of years, however. Baseball is a sport for which the WIC hasn’t been particularly kind to county squads, with many teams using up all their pitchers in a Saturday doubleheader and then finding themselves short of arms for a Tuesday conference game against Division I pitchers from Sullivan, Northview and West Vigo.
The possibility of joining the Wabash River Conference has been mentioned, though not officially, and would appear to have some merit. The North Division of an expanded WRC could consist of existing league members Fountain Central, North Vermillion, South Vermillion, Seeger, Attica and Covington. Theoretically, the three Putnam County schools besides Greencastle would join with Parke Heritage (the Rockville-Turkey Run merger) and Riverton Parke in a South Division.
Had the Rockville-Turkey Run merger not taken place, the numbers would be perfect. Another nearby school (North Montgomery or Southmont come to mind) would have to be recruited to even out the numbers.
Since the crossovers alternate each year on who the host school is, the unpopular notion of a Cloverdale at Seeger matchup would only potentially happen three times a year at most. I still don’t like the concept of crossovers for the reasons mentioned earlier, but the talent base would be more equal in each division than the current WIC so the results would be more valid.
Not many conferences have an enrollment discrepancy as vast as that of the WIC, which finds its biggest school (Northview) to have nearly three times as many students as the smallest (Cloverdale).
The league has existed in its current format for only three years, and the obvious cyclical nature of smaller schools surely has come into play. North Putnam, for example, appears to be on the verge of an “up” cycle after winning both the seventh- and eighth-grade boys’ basketball county titles and also having strong girls’ teams at that level.
Obviously, Northview hasn’t won the conference title in every sport despite its enrollment advantage.
An eight-team WIC would be more feasible for a full round-robin schedule, also eliminating the need for crossover games. Such an occurrence would play havoc with Greencastle’s football schedule, however. With seven WIC games in such an alignment (compared to six now), the Cubs would not still be able to play the other three county teams since the regular season is limited to only nine games. Not only are those games good for rivalry purposes, but they are normally some of the bigger crowds for all four schools each year.
Will any of these changes happen? Nobody knows.
It’s at least worth exploring, to make sure that all student-athletes are put into the best position possible for them to enjoy the athletic experience.