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http://www.nwitimes.com/sports/high-school...133a1073a1.html

Duneland Athletic Conference to drop double round-robin for basketball


By Jim Peters jim.peters@nwi.com, (219) 548-4363 | Posted: Friday, September 16, 2011 1:30 pm | (2) Comments

The much-maligned Duneland Athletic Conference double round-robin format in basketball is on its way out.

Principals from the eight member schools have voted to go to a schedule in which each team will play the other just one time during the regular season, effective in the 2013-14 school year.

"It's been a hot button issue," Michigan City principal Lee Dabagia said Friday. "If that's the way they vote, then that's what we'll support. Change is always something that makes you a little apprehensive at first but we'll adjust accordingly and be ready to go."

Most coaches have been opposed to the format for years, noting how it limits them in scheduling outside the DAC because the double round-robin consumes roughly two-thirds of the schedule. With most of the teams in the same sectional, it means they often played each other three times over the course of the season. It also makes it difficult for schools on the bottom end of the conference to become more competitive.

"That was something the coaches were certainly very passionate about," Dabagia said. "We feel like they presented some interesting evidence to their case and represented their arguments very well in discussions."

Dabagia said there are no plans to have an in-season conference tournament.

Read more: http://www.nwitimes.com/sports/high-school...l#ixzz1YQG0Ikqk

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Will this be for both boys and girls basketball?

[Southsider2k12]

Yes it will.

[taxthedeer]

Yes it will.

Why do we have to wait until 2013-2014? Nobody likes this.

[Southsider2k12]

Why do we have to wait until 2013-2014? Nobody likes this.

The ADs need time to schedule these additional 7 games. They need other schools schedules to free up so that there is room for the new games.

[Southsider2k12]

http://www.thenewsdispatch.com/articles/20...1f018553986.txt

Will DAC schedule change bring back Holiday Tourney?

By Adam Parkhouse
Sports Editor
Published: Friday, September 23, 2011 10:11 AM CDT
The news rang out late last week, almost as if it were delivered by angels.

The e-mail message on my computer screen seemed to glow brighter than the others. As I read the missive sent by Michigan City High School principal Lee Dabagia, I swear I could hear the most beautiful music coming from nowhere in particular.

This glorious piece of electronic communication stated the following:

”Today, the Duneland Athletic Conference Board of Control voted in favor of eliminating the double round robin schedule format in Boys and Girls Basketball, effective beginning the 2013-2014 season.”

*
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

OK, I may be overblowing this a bit. But I was genuinely excited to read those 30 words. I’ve made my disdain for the double round robin no secret over the years. And now, finally, the dirty deed had been undone. Teams would no longer be forced through a 14-game conference schedule and were free to do whatever they pleased with the remaining games.

Well, at least most of them. That’s because, dear friends, the elimination of the double round robin should bring about the reinstatement of a Michigan City institution: the Holiday Tournament.

When the double round robin was put in place for the 2003-04 season, it killed the Holiday Tournament, which largely consisted of Duneland Conference schools. Since those teams were also in a sectional together, the proposition of playing the same team four times in one season wasn’t very appealing, so the Holiday Tournament died an abrupt death.

But when the oppressive double round robin is lifted in two years, MCHS Athletic Director Bob “Bear” Falls tells me there’s a “strong possibility” the Holiday Tournament returns, most likely featuring City, La Porte, Chesterton and Valparaiso.

The winter spectacle was wildly popular in Michigan City, and therefore a big money maker for MCHS athletics. It’s probable return will help offset some of the money lost by abandoning the ludicrous scheduling format and will restore a tournament that was a sense of pride for people in this community.

But make no mistake, the money is a big part of this. It’s the primary reason the double round robin hung around so dang long. Let’s face it, a Michigan City-La Porte matchup will draw many more fans than a City-South Bend Riley game.

So, for ADs who must be concerned about the bottom line, this was and likely will remain a major issue. But the bottom line is coaches largely loathed the double round robin and are no doubt glad that it’s gone.

City coach John Boyd has expressed an interest since he got here in entering tournaments downstate or in Chicago. With more games to play with, Boyd will be free to take his Wolves wherever they’re wanted.

Besides, the sectional is still mostly DAC schools, so it’s not like we’re getting away from playing these teams completely. More variety, in my opinion, will lead to a better basketball team.

And even though the girls team has had success recently in the DAC, it’ll be good for them, too.

So, yeah, I was pretty happy to hear this particular bit of news. Aren’t you?

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http://posttrib.suntimes.com/crownpointsta...dont-do-it.html

CROWN POINT — When I heard that the Duneland Athletic Conference was going to try an in-season basketball tournamnet, like the Porter County Conference holds every January, I was very pleased.

For at least 25 years, I have wished the largest league in this area would adopt what the smallest league has, an eight-team boys and girls single elimination week-long championship.

A celebration of the league ending with boys and girls champions. It’s great for the players. It’s great for the schools’ bank accounts. It hits the front page of the local newspaper. Can’t tell you how excited I was to hear the news.

Until I read the details.

The DAC tentatively is NOT going to have a league championship tournament. The DAC tentatively is going to have two four-team, two-day tournaments over the holidays. Michigan City, LaPorte, Valparaiso and Chesterton will be in one tourney. Crown Point, Merrillville, Lake Central and, for some reason, Portage, will be the other foursome.

The two-day tournaments will have no bearing on league standings and will have no meaning whatsoever since all these teams meet in league games and seven of them (LC is th only exception) will meet in Class 4A Sectional 2 at the end of the year anyway.

Instead of replicating the classic PCC tournamnet, which plays to sellout crowds on the final Saturday, the Duneland Conference has created its own version of the old South County Tournament.

The South County Tournament, which was discontinued this year, goes back to pre-WW II era when the four southernmost Porter County teams played a Christmas tournament against each other basically so everybody in the little town neighborhoods could get together.

Despite the wonderful eulogies written in local papers last month, almost everyone hated the South County tournament because it was a meaningless meeting of teams you already saw in league and sectional play.

Coaches privately begged to get out of it because they wanted to play games that meant something. South County tourney members Hebron, Boone Grove, Morgan Township and Kouts would not restart the South County tournament if they were the only four teams in the state.

So the DAC half-tourney idea is a Depression-era waste of time and potential box office money.

The PCC championship tournament draws about 5,000 fans in a week. An eight-team, DAC tourney would draw twice that many fans because DAC schools are, on average, four times larger than PCC schools. But the the DAC masterminds can’t see that.

School officials, almost to a man, assume that any idea they didn’t come up with cannot possibly have merit and they resist trying it.

The Duneland Conference simply won’t adopt a format idea that has worked in a smaller league, even though it’s an idea theat works in most parts of the state.

To stop the double round-robin 14 game DAC league season, but replace it, in part, with two non-championship four-team tournaments between the same eight member schools is the early runaway front-runner for the dumbest idea of 2012.

The second dumbest idea may be the continued attempts to do away with the one-class high school basketball tournament.

But the IHSAA is being pushed to alter its prsent four-class tournament, which has been in effect since 1998. A state senator who introduced a bill to drop the four-class state basketball tournament and return to the state’s storied single-class high school tournament said last week he will drop his push for the change after the Indiana High School Athletic Association agreed to undertake a new review of the issue.

Sen. Mike Delph of Carmel reportedly said because of that IHSAA “review” commitment, he will drop his push to force the IHSAA to drop the four-class tournament (based on enrollment) that began in 1998.

The class-basketball legislation was part of a larger education bill which would require schools to wait till the end of August to start classes. That bill is hung up in a Senate committee for another week after Sen. Jean Leising (R-Oldenburg) voted no on Delph’s changes, apparently miscounting and believing the amendment would pass anyway.

Instead, the committee deadlocked 4-4. Leising asked if she could change her vote, but Senate rules prohibit that. Delph then dropped his part of the bill.

The review is expected to include meetings across the state to gather input. There is a town hall meeting tenatively scheduled for Merrillville in April. There is a coaches’ association proposal to shrink the number of classes to three, thereby reinstating some local rivalries at the sectional level.

But we are not going back to one class playoffs. Since the heyday of Indiana basketball in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, the smaller schools have stayed small while the larger schools have gotten much bigger. There is no way that South Cental and Hanover Central can compete with Lake Central (3,100 students) and Warren Central (4,500 students). Morgan Township never won the Valparaiso Sectional in basketball and they never would have. It seems we are going to need to have an entire generation pass on before we can accept that the same class format that works in football is good for basketball as well.

One thing that will change is the number of classes in the football playoffs. That’s going up from five to six if a football coaches association propsal is adopted by the IHSAA next month. The change is part of a three-point propsal to improve the sport.

Let me me the first to predict that the first two parts of the proposal — to go to a sixth class and to seed sectional play — will be adopted. The third part, a tricky “tradition factor” that automatically bumps a successful teams up a class, will be dropped.

The sixth class is coming. There were 313 schools playing a six-week once-a-week tournament in five classes last year. I don’t have to be a math major to tell you that when we get 321 football playing schools (and more charter schools are starting up every year) that the six week, five class format won’t work. Class 6A is ineviatable.

The long-awaited change is the seeding of each football sectional. This means that if Crown Point is 9-0 and Merrillville is 8-1, they will be seeded in state tournament play as the top seed and the second seed so they cannot meet until the sectional champoionship game. Last season, Wheeler (9-0) and Andrean (9-0) met in the sectional quarterfinals in Class 2A Sectional 25. Fan intersets dropped for the semifinals and finals.

Seeding is something that should have been done 20 years ago.