Conference Tournament Seeding

It sounds like the WIAC tournament will expand to take all eight teams with a tiered format, where Friday night #8 plays at #5 and #7 plays at #6, with the winners feeding into the normal brackets the following week on Tuesday night, with the winner of 5/8 playing at #4 and the winner of 6/7 playing at #3.

With an imbalanced schedule due to games not played for COVID protocols, the question is how the teams will be seeded.  Right now, the standings are listed by number of wins, not by winning percentage.  With some teams having played all 11 conference games, while other have played either 10 or 9, it will be interesting to see what direction the conference decides to go with this.

Last week of the abbreviated regular season and, in Wednesday night's cross-over games, the East swept the West.  Tomorrow night should be interesting to see if any of the West teams can reverse that trend heading into next Monday's first round WIAC tourney games.

They voided Eau Claire out of the West standings, giving Stout the #3 seed and a trip to Oshkosh with Platteville receiving the bye.  Probably a good decision to keep Oshkosh from sitting idle for almost two weeks between games.

Another interesting situation is this week's crossover games between La Crosse and Platteville.  If they hold on to their #1 seeds in the tourney and meet for the championship, it sets up a possibility they'll play each other three times in ten days.

That brings up the interesting situation of one of the East division teams having a Monday (afternoon?) bye, but not necessarily the #1 seed.  If they use winning percentages to determine placement, that would put Eau Claire at Oshkosh on Monday, so the Titans would lose three straight games.  Nothing posted on the WIAC website for the men's tourney as of 1:00 pm today.

Quote from: badgerwarhawk on February 19, 2021, 09:18:44 AM
They have tie breaking procedures which start with head to head and finish with a coin toss.  I don't know why they wouldn't simply follow those.  WHITEWATER/Oshkosh will not be made up.

While the women's first round WIAC tourney pairings are now posted, nothing on the men, due to the two COVID cancelled games.  If those game are not going to be made up, which it doesn't sound like they will, they've got to figure out what to do with the imbalanced records where four teams have played one less game than the other four.  With next week's cross-over games not counting, they have some time to work this out.

Quote from: PauldingLightUP on February 17, 2021, 05:51:20 PM
Seeding procedures have been updated on the site. Division games only to determine the seeds.

By the looks of it if Platteville and Oshkosh win out this week there would be a coin toss.

Also, the Eau Claire women have already won their West division even before play starts tonight.

If Platteville and Oshkosh both win on Friday night, after the three weeks of divisional games, that would put Platteville at 5-1 and Oshkosh at 4-1.  Assuming the Oshkosh-Whitewater game will not be made up, that would leave Platteville with a 1/2 game advantage in the standings.  I didn't see any verbiage in the WIAC tourney procedures that dealt with this situation.

With the women's WIAC tournament taking place the same three nights (they opted not to stagger to a T/Th/S format for the opposite gender), there's a strong potential for several W/M doubleheaders to take place, especially on March 1 for the opening round, but possibly on Wed. and Friday, too.

Do the "crossover" games count toward the standings for placement in the WIAC tourney?  As of right now, La Crosse and Platteville both sit in first place in their respective divisions, but they have to play a home-away the final week for their crossover.  If these games count for tourney placement, it will have implications for both teams heading into the first week of March.