As expected, defending state champion Konawaena received the top seed in this week’s OC16/HHSAA girls basketball tournament.
Punahou paid a heavy price for coming up short in the ILH championship n Saturday, forcing it into a first-round matchup with Farrington with a meeting against the Wildcats up next.
Kamehameha-Maui and Kaiser open up in the other game at Moanalua, with the winner playing OIA champion Leilehua.
Lahainaluna tops the Kalani bracket and will face the winner between OIA foes Roosevelt and Mililani while ILH queen Maryknoll gets a day to scout Hilo and Radford in their first round matchup.
The semifinals will be Thursday at Moanalua with the championship on Friday at the Stan Sheriff Center.
While the Big Island’s best are on Oahu, KS-Hawaii will get a little bit of home cooking in the Division II tournament on the Big Island.
The Warriors were awarded the No. 2 seed and will meet the winner between Waipahu and St. Francis at Waiakea. Kaimuki is the other top seed at that site, waiting for the winner between MId-Pacific and Hanalani.
Hawaii Baptist is the team to beat in that tournament, getting the top seed and playing the winner between McKinley and Damien at Keaau. Kapaa and Kohala are in the other first-round matchup with the winner facing Molokai.
The semifinals are Friday at Keaau with the final on Saturday in the same gym.
Why again does an OIA team, this year, Leilehua who is ranked as the 4th seed get an easy first game, either against KS-Maui or Kaiser. Both KS-Maui and Kaiser are not ranked in the States top 10. Konawaena has to play either Farrington or the States 4th ranked team, Punahou. Lahainaluna has to either play the States 7th ranked Roosevelt team or Mililani. And Maryknoll has to either play the 5th ranked Hilo team or the 9th ranked Radford team.
The entire tourney is flawed.
Yeah, Leileihua really got a lucky draw. Meanwhile the D2 bracket gives HBA a cakewalk to the finals with MPI, KS-Hawaii, and Kaimuki all on the other half of the bracket.
I do understand how the brackets end up this way though. There’s a very specific formula for handling extra teams from each league after the top 4 seeds are determined. But if they were to take it a step further and seed all 12 teams it might be better even if it ended up having teams from the same league on the same side of the bracket.
Or they could still send the second representative from each league to the opposite half of the bracket from the 1st but give teams 5-8 a ranking. Had that been done this year we’d see Punahou vs Leileihua in round 2 and Kaiser vs Konawaena, but the other half of the bracket would be about the same. The only real problem with this years bracket is the Punahou Konawaena match should be in the semis instead of Rd 2
They need to change the language. Who cares about putting certain teams from the same league on the opposite sides of the brackets? I say invite 16 and rank them 1-16 with no byes.
I can’t see that happening. Seems that someone cared enough to put that language in there and I don’t expect it would be a concensus to take that language out.
But I don’t agree that the tournament should be expanded to 16 teams. That would be more than half of the teams qualifying for states. Kinda takes the luster off when everyone makes it.