By Paul Honda
paul@hondareport.com
Monday, Feb. 12, 2007

There are a multitude of huge games this week, starting with Kauai and Waimea tonight in the KIF's tiebreaker, i.e. championship, game. Kauai's been hot, has more scorers, while Waimea has pretty much been dependent on Chris Newcomb. The game is scheduled at Kauai, for reasons that completely escape me.

... Kind of like the "logic" that had the BIIF regular-season tiebreaker game at Honokaa (because when Honokaa played Keaau earlier, that game was at Keaau). Every team in the BIIF played equal amounts of home and road games, so the logic used by the league is dysfunctional at best.

The truth is, the Honokaa-Keaau game should have been played on a neutral court. Period. And the logic that has a team that finished the regular season tied for first, but is now out of the state-tourney picture completely, is also baffling. Go fix it in time for next season, BIIF.

The only league with a worse line of reasoning is the OIA, where winning the regular season is meaningless. Oh, an unbeaten team will get a bye and home court for a night, but that's it. The bye, if anything, is a stumbling block for teams going up against a first-round winner that is humming on all cylinders. This flawed logic always came with this comment: "We don't play enough games to give the regular-season winner a state berth." That was prior to this year, when OIA teams had just nine games before the playoffs. Now, they play 12. Still not enough?

The ILH has it right. After 12 games, Punahou and Iolani finished at the top and were awarded state berths. The remaining teams will playoff for the third spot (and then play the BIIF's No. 3 for a state berth). In ILH Division II, University High and HBA earned, I repeat EARNED their state berths, and the rest of the division will battle for a third state berth.

If this completely sensible logic applied to the OIA ... Mililani (12-0 in regular-season play) and Kalaheo (11-1) would have rightfully earned state berths. And in the OIA White, Kaiser (one loss) and Aiea (one loss) would have secured state berths, as well. For Mililani, there is hope after a quarterfinal loss only because the league has five state berths. For Aiea, not so fortunate. Two months of hard work are down the drain on a last-second shot by Thompson in the playoffs. This is what we want to teach our kids? Again, a matchup between West winner Aiea and East winner Kaiser would have sufficed. Or simply go two rounds through the entire White Conference and reward the top three teams.

If the ILH logic applied to the BIIF, Honokaa and Keaau, both 13-1 in the regular season, would be in the state tournament. In a league where 3- to 4-hour bus rides are common, these two teams truly deserved their spots. And the rest of the BIIF would have played off for the third spot, fair enough.

At the very least, I suggest that the Red West and Red East winners face off for an automatic state berth. And perhaps, then give them byes in the playoffs until the semifinals, where the top two remaining teams in the playoffs would join them. Rewarding regular-season play, which is nearly two months of work, sends the right message to kids about day-in, day-out consistency.

This jackpot-lottery mentality of winning it all in the span of a week's worth of playoffs is fine for the NBA, which happens to be holding its all-star game (where else) in Las Vegas. Fine for them, not so fine a mentality for high-school student-athletes.

I wonder what Coach Wooden would think. 

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