Girls basketball coaches dislike new system

BY ADAM RONIS | This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

January 13, 2008 

Imagine one division in the NBA with Boston, Detroit, Phoenix, Dallas and San Antonio and another consisting of the Knicks, Minnesota, Miami, Seattle and Memphis.

That's basically what Nassau has done with girls basketball.

Many sports in Nassau already had gone to ability-based grouping, but this is the first season girls basketball has used it.

Some teams are guaranteed playoff spots and others have only a slim chance. Teams were seeded based on returning players, last season's results and how the junior varsity fared.

The top 10 seeds in Class AA are in the playoffs, regardless of record, and no lower conference will be seeded above a higher conference. A team in Conference AA-I could go winless yet not be seeded worse than fifth. In Class A, nine teams already were assured of playoff berths before they took their first dribble.

"The fair way is population," Wantagh coach Stan Bujacich said. "The programs that work hard are being punished. It takes away from your goals. Goals are part of education. It's not educationally sound when you tell a group of kids you can't make the playoffs."

After the seeding was done in April, the complexion of several teams changed because of transfers. Long Beach is seeded No.17 in Class AA but is much better with the addition of Jasmine Pitts, who transferred from St. John the Baptist. Long Beach (5-0) needs an 80 percent league winning percentage to qualify for the postseason because it is in Conference IV.

"The complaint was there was no competition," Floral Park coach Greg Mayerhofer said. "There still are lopsided scores. Now you can't have rivalries."

The new way of grouping schools has had other effects. With more competitive games, for example, fewer players will see time.

"My biggest gripe is I like to play all my kids," Mayerhofer said. "I have five kids that never see the court. Why should they bother coming to games?"

Herricks went winless in league play four years ago and now is the sixth seed in Class AA because of hard work, but no matter how well the Highlanders do this season, there is a limit on how much that will be rewarded.

"It allows coaches to give players a false sense of how things are going," coach Glenn Lavey said. "We can go undefeated and can't be seeded higher than sixth. Cinderella teams get killed in this system. It'll help us next season and I still don't like it. They just made teams that always get killed happy."

Many coaches believe the system was implemented to help those teams. And that's fine with coaches of those weaker teams.

"The teams that struggle to compete aren't worried about making the playoffs," Section VIII coordinator and Port Washington coach Stephanie Joannon said. "They just want competitive games. The elite teams will be good anywhere. The athletic council's ultimate goal is to have competitive games in the league season."

Port Washington is an example, having graduated nine players. "If we played where we were last year, we would only be competitive with two teams," Joannon said.

Massapequa didn't play any of the county semifinalists in the regular season last year, didn't get pushed hard enough and lost in the Class AA final to finish 20-1. Massapequa went 12-0 in league play and won almost every game by more than 25 points.

"I welcome that we're going to play 13 competitive league games," coach Shari Roessler said. "The league schedule I had last year hurt us in the playoffs. Now I'll be prepared for the playoffs."