Steve Christilaw: There’s a new player in the State B tournament: RPI
He was young and starting out, but the promising coach landed the head coaching job at Brewster High School.
The Bears were a State B powerhouse with a storied history in the old Spokane Coliseum. Brewster’s 82-game win streak, the back-to-back-to-back State B titles, the twins, Dale and Dave Smith – it all added to the school’s mystique.
It’s tough to follow a legend, and in Brewster that legend was coach Dick Olson.
The legend was out there, but Weisner had no idea how deeply its roots were sunk into the fabric of everyday life in Brewster.
As a new coach, he wandered into the school’s office one day and took a look at the school calendar and noticed that there were three school days blocked off in early March. The only explanation were the words “State B.”
He was flattered, he recalled, that the school thought that highly of his prospects that they would plan that far ahead.
“You think we’re good enough to go this year?” he asked the woman behind the desk.
That’s when the mood changed.
She looked him in the eye and, with deadly seriousness, she said, “We go. Every. Year.”
That, he said, is when he realized the expectations the community had for him and for his basketball team were as big of a part of the program as any returning senior.
The aura of a state tournament is real. It’s palpable. It breathes and burns in the body of every high school athlete until all possibilities of making it a reality are extinguished.
Kids don’t chant “On to Regionals.” Or “On to a Play-In Game.”
If you grow up in Spokane, you organically understand the importance of the single word “State.” The community has embraced the idea of state and celebrates the State B tournament, in all its incarnations, in more ways and with more joy than any other community in the state.
The state’s biggest schools have long called the Puget Sound area home for their state tournament – taking over big arenas to stage the championships. But Seattle and Tacoma have never treated those tournaments the way Spokane embraces the State B.
State basketball tournaments used to have a straightforward format: 16 teams gathered for a double-elimination tournament. Win four games and you get the big gold ball trophy to take home for the fans who didn’t travel with you to the tournament.
But that changed.
The powers that be decided that taking three school days for a state tournament was too much, so they moved those first-round state games to regional sites – places where the kids can get in at least a partial day of class before climbing on a bus and heading out to play the biggest game of the year to that point.
Oh, they still called them state tournament games.
As a relatively new vegetarian, I can also report that manufacturers sell a textured protein that they call breakfast sausage, too.
You can call something by a name, but you know the real thing when you see it.
The state governing body, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, announced a format change for this year’s state basketball tournaments last week.
Did they go back to the tried-and-true formula of bygone eras? No.
Instead they announced that four more teams will be added to the state tournament and they will be chosen by a Ratings Percentage Index (RPI) system like the one used by the NCAA – a method of measuring strength of schedule as a way of ensuring the most deserving teams make it onto the state tournament stage.
Is that a good thing? Hard to tell. It has been controversial in states that employ it.
Nostalgia says it’s a swing-and-a-miss, but nostalgia isn’t always the best measure of such things.
Nostalgia also leads you to buy the textured protein boneless riblets from the freezer case, too. If you’re expecting real barbecued ribs, your disappointment will be great.
So we will wait and see with the new format.
Steve Christilaw can be reached at steve. christilaw@gmail.com.