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Today we are going to take a second look at the new VHSL alignment in an effort to help further educate you on how the playoffs will be set up and how brackets will be seeded in May. In the system that has been in place for a long time, District or Conference tournament finish determined which teams went to the Region Tournament and what seed they had in the Region. This system will still be in effect for just three Regions going forward, Class 6 Region D, Class 6 Region C, and Class 5 Region C. All other Regions have gone to a new system.

For the rest of Virginia, District Tournaments will mostly not be played, as they have no bearing on the Region Tournament. The other Regions are using a power point system similar to the one that is being used by football to determine which teams make the Region Tournament and what seed they have.

Under VHSL, each Region is allowed to create its own criteria for how it runs its tournament, so each Region will do things a bit differently, but here are a few examples of how power points are being calculated in different parts of Virginia:

Class 6 Region A
Region A will take eight schools out of twelve to the tournament based on power points. The system they have adopted for this Region is three points for any win, one for a tie, and zero for a loss. There is no different scoring based on classification, so schools such as Granby (Eastern District) and Woodside (Peninsula) will not be penalized as the only 6A schools in their Districts. One could argue that thos schools have an unfair advantage because they are playing smaller schools.

Class 4 Region A and Region B
Both of these Regions have adopted similar systems as well. Both Regions take eight out of thirteen teams to the Region tournament, and select and seed them based on a different power points system than described above. In their system, a win is seven points, a loss to a 4A or smaller school is no points, a loss to a 5A school is one point, and a loss to a 6A school is two points. Those additional points were meant to help schools such as Deep Creek and Great Bridge, which will play most of their regular season schedule against 6a schools in the Southeastern District.

Other Notes

While each Region is different, it is our understanding that games against private schools or out of state schools only can earn win points. Teams that play a tough private school opponent or go out of state on break and lose to tough opponent will not gain any power points for those games. While this will likely not effect the schedule for 2018, its possible that we could see teams play less quality private school opponents and avoid taking spring trips out of Virginia in the future as they are less likely to score power points during those games.

The other unfortunate drawback to this system is the death of the District Tournament throughout most of Virginia. With most Regions taking all teams into the tournament or using power points to determine who makes it, District Tournaments are obsolete at this point and most of Virginia isn't going to play them this year.