We currently have 5 Regional Tournaments located in Houston, Oklahoma City, Omaha, Indianapolis, & Atlanta leading up to the National Tournament in Springfield Missouri March 15-21st 2010
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 Bid for Division 1
2) All-Region Teams
3) Exposure for All-American Candidates Exposure
4) Guaranteed #1 Seeds (For the Winner of each Regional Tournament)
5) Guaranteed First Team All-American (For the Winner of each High School Regional Tournament)
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 to help determine this factor).
The winner of each Regional Tournament is GUARANTEED a #1 seed in Division 1.
The team that wins the High School Regional Tournament is GUARANTEED one First Team All-American.
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.
There will be an additional High School Individual Awards Category, as an All Regional Team will be selected in addition to All-American Honorable Mentions and 1st, 2nd and 3rd 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) Head to Head during the regular season.
For Nationals Seeding Purposes All heads up 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.