RegionFBFan

21 hours ago, RegionFBFan said:

Disagree on Mater Dei game in State finals. #1 MD was a good football team. #2 Andrean is playing with their back up qb and original starting qb coming off broken collarbone and # 3 Bowen playing with a torn PCL and sprains his ankle in 1st quarter in same leg. 
 

I’ll give you Pioneer game. Pioneer no slouch but not the better team. They made every 4th down play and Andrean didn’t and turned it over. Covid year…. Weird season overall. 

Dude, there is an entire backstory on Clacks that could take up this entire thread. It didn’t work out so well for him. Feel bad for him though.

Henry struggled in big games all year and Ballentine was bad on recovery and honestly was underwhelming his entire senior year not all his fault but a lot was. He could never read rpo’s his entire career.

Once Drayk was hobbled and MD shutdown run, pressure placed on QB’s and neither performed. 

On that day, the better team won. If healthy, maybe different outcome.

46 minutes ago, scarab527 said:

I’d buy the backup QB excuse if the kid hadn’t started basically the whole year outside of the first drive of the first game. Bowen did drag that team single-handedly to state, but if you know he’s banged up, don’t make the entire offensive game plan revolve around handing him the ball every play. Ballantine had been back a couple weeks if I recall correctly, if they really weren’t that confident in Henry they should’ve used that time to get Ballentine back in there as opposed to panicking and putting him in the second half of the state game when he had only played a couple of snaps in garbage time since he had been back. Yes Mater Dei was good, but I don’t know how one can say that was a well played and prepared for game by the Niners as a team and staff. 

If you recall, they did prep Ballentine but his arm was a rag arm. When he played earlier in playoffs, his arm was garbage. Not faulting him but he was a shell of himself. Henry played well during season all things considered but struggled in big games and did in that game. Bowen had a pcl injury since Merrillville game aggravated in semi state and sprained it in 1st quarter. Oh I almost forgot, Clacks has strep throat came on during walk through at LOS.

So basically your entire offense is injured, recovering from injury and/or sick and MD coaches were brilliant in running a 4x4 stack they didn’t show all year.

So Scarab the new OC for Andrean, what you going to do.

Also, let’s not forget MD damn good team. I’m sorry but refuse to view that one as an example of a bad loss.
 

Live viewing:

Decade: Brady Allen ( only because Matt DeSomer is outside the 10 yrs)

All Time: Tommy Finn ( He was the best clutch player I’ve seen in high school sports). When a play had to be made in football and baseball, he always delivered. Just unbelievable! 
 

Desomer was better pure athlete than Finn but Tommy Finn had the “it” factor.

2 minutes ago, First_Backer_Inside said:

Rensselaer coming back down in 2A taking the place of Laville in that sectional will keep it more competitive. The Bombers have always been very competitive in 2A, are well coached, and I expect they will be again this year being back down. We always scrimmage them at Manchester camp and are always impressed with a lot of their guys.

Completely agree with you. RC is a good program, well coached with kids that buy in. They also run an offensive scheme we don’t see often and tends to give us fits.

Disagree on Mater Dei game in State finals. #1 MD was a good football team. #2 Andrean is playing with their back up qb and original starting qb coming off broken collarbone and # 3 Bowen playing with a torn PCL and sprains his ankle in 1st quarter in same leg. 
 

I’ll give you Pioneer game. Pioneer no slouch but not the better team. They made every 4th down play and Andrean didn’t and turned it over. Covid year…. Weird season overall. 

24 minutes ago, Bobref said:

42-7 over the past 4 seasons. That’s a pretty tough jury.

I tend to agree with some caveats. Most of those wins were against really weak opponents in Greater South Shore Conference. Impressed with their performance and results in 1st year of NCC which was arguably down last year.  Playoff performance needs to improve. HC is a great addition to NCC.

Gipper - what are you talking about in regards to Andrean and NCC?

Examples please. I can think of LaVille last year as one they should have won with a very young team. NCC has had state finalists in Hobart and Andrean(2) in last 5 years.

A lot here to respond to:

1. Enrollment is still extremely large. Your telling me that you can’t find quality players with close to 3,000 students??

2. If your definition of a good program is winning State titles, I get it to a point but this would imply all other 6A teams in football aren’t good programs besides those in the MIC as they have won every 6A title.

3. I was not aware of the Pop Warner situation. A shame as this was a very good program.

4. Middle school set up still leaves two very large feeder schools. Should be adequate.

5. Andrean, Mt Carmel and Marian Catholic have always poached and will continue to poach.

6. Agree Hanover benefitting the most with the growth in south St. John.

I think there is more to support or lack there of from the Administration. I’ve heard from too many people that there is no desire to be great in football from Administration. Limit budget for football to support an excellent staff is one example that I’ve heard consistently from these same people.

I can’t figure out LC football program. Large enrollment, growing community, great facilities, good in all other boys and girls sports, well established youth football program and three large feeder middle schools. It would seem everything is in place to be really successful.

they have had some competent coaches come through over the years.

What is stopping them from winning at high level?

50 minutes ago, 1st_and_10 said:

That's exactly what it is.  It says in the article that Coach Gilbert will become the Head Coach at Wabash in the Fall of 2025.

Good. Sorry, I didn’t read the article. A definite upgrade for Wabash!!!

My only surprise is he’s going back as Associate HC not the Head Coach. Maybe this is a transition year for Morrel and Gilbert?

Coach Gilbert is a great coach, Best of Luck!

17 hours ago, HoopsCoach said:

How much value is there in a 1A state championship after 3-4 teams in the class drop football or close all together in a 2 year cycle?  That is my primary reason for opposing 1A having only 32 schools.

If I read this properly, you actually are proposing going below 32 teams. What CoachMack is proposing is that it would never go below 32. 
 

If your argument is simply opposed to having 32 teams in a class and thus it devalues a championship then you must currently oppose 6A and 5A with32 schools.

I still like the earlier reco with:

6A:32

5A: 64

4A:64

3A:64

2A:64

1A:32

I just don’t think Indiana has enough High Schools participating in football to support 8 classes. Too much dilution.

i believe Ohio and Illinois have 8 classes. How many schools play football? I think Ohio has double the schools not sure about Illinois.

#4 not a question more a statement. Someone on here suggested ND hosting some of the Championship games. LOS is great don’t change it.

IHSAA make these changes now:

1. Adjust brackets to 32 in 6A and 1A, then split 5A - 2A with 61-64 schools in each.

2. Seed the Sectionals. Either complete seed or I’d be happy with seed top 2 and blind draw on the others as someone suggested earlier.

3. Neutral Site Semi State games

4. Keep LOS as home for all Championship games. 
 

Thats all. Too much to ask?

If I’m reading correctly, with 32 in 6A and 1A, the ratio large to small within a class is pretty similar with the exception of 6A. As you state, there is not much you can do with 6A with Carmel being so large.

So why not do it? Makes too much sense.

Interesting, but not a complete surprise. This is a loss for LC. He is a good coach. He has Chicago Catholic league ties. It would not surprise me if he heads back that direction.

9 minutes ago, scarab527 said:

Seeding is the first step in the removal of the all-in. A couple years of complete first round blowouts where one team has to travel 1 hour+ will have people ready for a qualifier. The all-in only makes sense with the random draw. 

Agree. A phased approach with actual results then make the next step.

And the IHSAA is surveying coaches and administrators on seeding as we speak.

3 hours ago, PDB26 said:

Stares in single-class basketball tournament.

True but totally different here. With single class basketball change, all teams were still able to participate in tournament. With this proposal of qualifying for tournament, you are telling a portion of your contributing member schools that they can not participate in tourney. Simply not going to happen.

In my opinion, this is all extremely unrealistic. The IHSAA will never move away from all schools qualifying for the tournament. This is what makes Indiana high school sports unique and they like being unique. I think the more realistic outcome is 6 classes with 32 in 6A and 32 in 1A and close to 62-64 teams in 5A to 2A.

I also believe there is a strong possibility of seeding occurring in tournament and possibly neutral site semi state games.

Other than these changes, the rest is a pipe dream.

On 2/9/2024 at 9:54 AM, Jon Scott said:

One of those good Indiana coaches I would think that Penn would be interested in would be Valparaiso's Bill Marshall, a young state championship-winning coach .  I have no idea if he would be interested, but interestingly Penn just tapped the head basketball coach from Valpo for their head job last year.  Perhaps it's karma.  

Coach Marshall is a great coach and they have a great staff but why leave Valpo? He has built Valpo program to rival Penn. Valpo already in a better conference than Penn.

Congrats to Coach St. Louis on the Munster role. Great school district, good conference, tough sectional.

After intro to players, you need to start locking down the Munster  athletes from the Illinois schools. The town of Munster has talent but they keep losing them to Illinois.

WCGrad- good work. It looks about as good as it can get.

P/P being removed from 1A makes no sense especially since that is why they instituted the SF.

25 minutes ago, oldtimeqb said:

Ok.  Let's make this work.  

Scrimmage Week is Game 1 and Weeks 1-9 make a 10 game regular season. 

You MUST win 2 games against another IHSAA school to qualify.  If you can't get 2 wins out of 10 games then just move on to basketball.  For reference in 2023 there were 47 teams with 10 or 9 losses.  A 9 loss team either finished 1-8 and lost Round 1 or got lucky with a draw finished 2-9 or 3-9.  But to get 9 losses, you had to be 1-8 after week 9. 

Last year that means 315 - 47 = 268 "qualifiers" for this set up.  Even could allow a few more teams that scheduled wins, because the magic number would be 272.

Top 32 in enrollment = 6A tournament

Remaining 240 qualifiers split into 5 even classes of 48.  Seeded obviously with the top 16 in each class getting a bye and let a bunch of 2 & 3 win teams face each other round 1 (week 10 of current schedule).  Week 11 is round 2, each class has 32 teams and the 6 classes will still crown champs Thanksgiving weekend in LOS.

If I were omnipotent commissioner for a day, this is what I set up. 

 

Great start! Questions and comments:

1. 5 evenly split brackets - what is the spread from largest to smallest in each bracket in this scenario? It seems like the large school spread which is bad today gets worse.

2. What would you use to determine seeding? I agree with seeding.

3. Agree LOS is the only location for finals. Removes weather and turf from equation.

4. I would add Neutral site locations for Semi State. Prefer regionals at neutral sites but might be asking too much.