JEFF JORDAN, Special to the Post
Posted: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 4:16 pm

Thursday afternoon Siegel High boys (28–8) will take on the Memphis Monster, Melrose (34–4), in the TSSAA state high school basketball tournament.

It’s a daunting task for the Stars who face one of the most talented, biggest teams in the tournament at 3:15 at Murphy Center. Melrose has lost only four games, and they beat each of the teams they lost to at some point during the season. They are big and quick, and they are, in a word, Melrose.

Siegel Coach Ben Dotson has dodged bullets and accepted challenges all year. Injuries crippled the Stars at times and they came through anyway.

When Kerry Hammonds went down and then LeVon Tate went down, others stepped up. Junior Cedrick Williams has had a career year and Marc Gooch, already a star in two sports, elevated his game when needed.

During the last 10 games of the season, Coach Dotson has searched his starting lineup and his bench and found new heroes that contributed big down the stretch such as Conner Smith, Kyle Adams, Oscar Butler, Stephen Hurt, T.J.Mitchell, Janeal McDonald and Devante Ellis.

It’s been a team effort to get the Stars to the state and the final 8.

True, the Stars have had problems besides the injuries. They couldn’t beat Oakland but, unlike last year, Siegel is still playing and is region and sectional champion.

Can the Stars win Thursday? Of course they can. Do I want them to? Absolutely! Will they win? Unlikely I’m afraid, because standing in front of Melrose is, in my judgment at least, an unbeatable enemy – the dreaded Blind Draw.

The NBA, colleges, elementary and middle school teams all seed by division, district or league records and the colleges have a complicated formula that reveals the best and worst of the 64 teams on selection day(s) and then pits the stronger against the weaker teams.

The TSSAA high schools do this as well in district play, region play and sectionals, but when we get to the State Tournament we have a blind draw – aptly named. This does a great deal of harm to the tournament and I’ll explain how in a moment.

If we had a blind draw in college, Duke could play Syracuse in round one. That would be silly, you say. That’s exactly my point, and it’s the very reason the Cleveland Cavaliers will not play Boston in round one in the NBA playoffs, and it’s also the very reason the Blackman Middle and Siegel Middle girls did not square off in round one in their league tournament.

The better teams run up excellent records and earn the right to play a weaker opponent early. The blind draw says phooey on your excellent record; we have your ping-pong ball ready.

Let’s digress to the girl’s state for a moment, since we know how it ended. To whom was it unfair and why? It was very unfair to Mt. Juliet in my opinion because they were widely considered to be the states No. 1 team. The blind draw made everyone equal and as a result the best game of the tournament was played in the first round.

This happened to the Oakland boys and Coach Randy King at least three times and they were not alone. It happens every year in at least one level and sometimes to more than one team, which I will point out in a moment.

Okay, what should have happened? There are a lot of ways to seed a tournament but I’m going to propose just one. Seed the teams by a combination of number of wins and winning percentage. If we end with a tie, I’ve got ideas of how to fairly break it.

If we had done this with this year’s girl’s state, Mt. Juliet and Morristown West would have tied for No. 1, and RHS would have tied with Clarksville for sixth.

As a result RHS would have played Walker Valley or Overton in round one and Mt. Juliet would have played Memphis Central or Oak Ridge who would have been tied for the last seed.

The odds would heavily favor Mt. Juliet and RHS not meeting until the finals, which is exactly what should have happened. We would have had a better tournament, and Mt. Juliet would not have been sitting at home after round one.

I think you might feel the same way when I remind you that RHS could easily have lost to Mt. Juliet. It was, if you recall, a one-point overtime win. RHS loses and no gold ball, no all tournament selections, no MVP and no thrill of being the state’s best. If RHS had lost, we all might be cursing the pingpong balls and the blind draw.

Okay, back to Siegel and the boy’s tournament, which is a lot worse than the girls.

Take a look at AAA for a minute and you will notice that the three teams with the best records are all in the same bracket with Siegel. The top bracket, thanks to the blind draw, has 119 wins and 18 losses, and the bottom bracket has 96 wins and 31 losses.

Clearly something is wrong with this. This is very unfair to Bearden (31 wins) and Beech (30 wins) because one will go home on Thursday. They should be in opposite brackets and Melrose should be in yet another.

Let’s seed using my method (see above). In round one, Bearden (#1) would play Columbia (#8), Melrose (#2) would play Dobyns Bennett (#7), Northeast (#3) would play
Siegel (#6) and Beech (#4) would play White Station (#5).

As it stands, the championship game will likely be played the first game of the tournament (Bearden vs. Beech) or game 5 when Melrose plays the Beech/Bearden winner, unless, of course, Siegel can beat heavily favored Melrose and then also beat either Bearden or Beech, both of whom will be favored to beat the Stars. Those Siegel wins would be fine with me.

Before you email me and I welcome emails, allow me to say that there are drawbacks to my method and there are reasons for a blind draw. They’re not good reasons but there are reasons.

I welcome other ideas and discussion but I truly believe we can do a lot better for the players and schools than seeding the TSSAA basketball showcase using luck and the bounce of a few balls. I challenge the TSSAA to do better.

In the meantime – GO STARS!