crimsonace1

Just released. 2A/4A/6A on Friday 1A/3A/5A on Saturday ... as it would have been had the IHSAA announced the State Finals pairings before the season.

It's set up to try to prevent teams from hosting multiple rounds in a row, but it does happen occasionally because both teams were home in the previous round and one team has the northernmost sectional and southernmost regional in the pairing (or vice-versa). The one stipulation put in is a team that was on the road for both the sectional final and the regional hosts the semistate (unless both teams were on the road for those two rounds).

6A: Westfield vs. Center Grove 5A: Zionsville vs. Cathedral 4A: Hobart vs. Roncalli 3A: Chatard vs. Danville 2A: FW Luers vs. Western Boone 1A: South Adams vs. Covenant Christian 9 of the 12 state finalists from Central Indiana. Given this is the first time the IHSAA has not used pre-determined State Finals matchups, my guess is 3A/1A/5A on Friday (1A in the middle of the day so South Adams has more time to arrive) ... then 2A/4A/6A on Saturday, which also gets your two biggest classes in primetime (but also Indy-area teams so they have the shortest drives home after the late games).

You kick so the best they can do is tie with the 2-pointer. They'd have to score a TD, 2PC AND then score again in OT (and likely convert another 2PC) to beat you.

42-20 Hobart over Marion in the 4th

35-14 Roncalli late 3rd

I know your history here is throwing really bad hot takes against the wall and seeing what sticks, but this isn't even close to accurate. 3/4 of the MIC is Marion County township schools, of which LN & LC are two. The HCC has one township school and is largely comprised of large, fast-growing schools in the donut counties. Culturally and competitively, LN (the defending girls basketball state champion and a perennial boys basketball powerhouse) and LC fit in much better in the MIC. Geographically, LC and LN would be close to Fishers & HSE, but the rest of the league is farther away from the Lawrence schools than every MIC school except Center Grove. LC and LN have a lot more in common with Warren Central and North Central (their direct neighbors), as well as Pike and Ben Davis, than they do with Westfield, Brownsburg and Zionsville. They're both good conferences. They both have a good mix of schools. They're both competitive. The MIC, right now, is a better football conference and also one of the premier basketball conferences in the state. The HCC is a very good football conference but not quite at the MIC's level ... however, it is the best baseball conference in the state (by far). One could argue it's also the top soccer conference in the state, and is one of the tops in both boys and girls basketball.

New Pal had an enrollment of 1,100 at the time. Not exactly a mega-school like Carmel (although Westfield was probably about 1,500 or so in 2014 ... it has grown rapidly).

I knew you were aware, but I'm not sure many reading the thread know Cathedral and Brebeuf are independent of the Archdiocese and thus have a different setup.

Cathedral & Brebeuf are not diocesan schools - Cathedral is independent of the archdiocese and Brebeuf is a Jesuit school and thus is also independent. They don't have deanery schools directly feeding them. But it is interesting (and frankly, not surprising) that one school would sign on to rules, and then suddenly break free, giving itself a significant competitive advantage over the other Catholic schools in the area. But because it is independent of the archdiocese, it can do whatever it wants. It appears a large number of Cathedral and Brebeuf students come from Hamilton County, whose parishes are part of the Diocese of Lafayette.

The cycles begin with odd-numbered years. Columbus East won the 4A title in 2013 and then lost to New Palestine in the 2014 semistate ... that gave them the 6 points to bump up to 5A for 2015-16 (which it would have anyway due to enrollment). Because East was 6A this year and a bumped team can only drop one class, it will go back to 5A next year no matter its enrollment.

I don't think Carmel nor Center Grove accept out-of-district transfers. Zionsville doesn't, either. It's still up to the receiving school to accept the transfer.

I graduated from Pike in the early 1990s and that was definitely the case. We had a broad range from very upper-middle-class/upper-class areas, to solidly working-class neighborhoods with older housing stock and very low SES populations. The further south you went from 96th Street to 38th Street (and the further east - especially inside I-465), generally, the more the socioeconomics changed.

Valpo has lost only one game in two years - to a two-time state champion team at Lucas Oil. I've long believed they were the top 5A team in the north (and 2/3 were Dwenger/Zionsville).

Myers is very good. Their offense is very simple and geared toward being effective even with small linemen. They run it very well. It's a very unique offense based on a lot of misdirection - there's a jet sweep action on almost every play and then a power going to the opposite side ... and play action off that if you sell out to stop the run. They have 11 TDs on 23 completed passes this year.

Part of the reason why is the IHSAA changes the Success Factor threshholds every time Cathedral is about to drop. Not sure if it's just coincidence, but the change from 4 points to 3 to stay up (and the "you can't drop more than one division" rule) came after Cathedral was going to drop to 4A, and it was again adjusted from 3 points to 2 when Cathedral would have dropped to 4A (and the entire 4A & 5A tournament fields were reshuffled because the classes and sectionals had already been announced).

Conference Indiana was essentially a merger of what was left of the SCC and the old Central Suburban Athletic Conference (Pike/Decatur Central/Franklin Central/Lawrence Central/Southport/Perry Meridian) as both had been shrunk by teams lost to other conferences. The SCC was really hit by the loss of CG (to the MIC) and Shelbyville (to the HHC). Rushville had left a few years before to start the HHC in 1994. Seymour found its way to the Hoosier Hills. The CSAC only lost Lawrence North to the MIC, but that dropped their membership to 6. LC wasn't invited to the MIC as LN had a bigger athletic profile at the time in almost every sport. Pike's enrollment was still well below 2,000 at the time the MIC was formed, too. What's interesting is Center Grove bounced between both the CSAC and the SCC - its departure from CSAC for the SCC (along with Brownsburg & Greenfield-Central leaving) is what opened the door for Southport & Perry Meridian to join in 1991 and turn CSAC into an all-Marion County league. And Southport is the only remnant of the CSAC remaining in Conference Indiana. Pike & LC went to the MIC and swapped spots with the TH schools, Franklin Central to the Hoosier Crossroads, Decatur Central & Perry Meridian to the Mid-State. Conference Indiana, when it was formed, was an incredible boys basketball conference. Pike won three state titles while in the league, Bloomington North won one (in addition to its 1997 title) and played in two State Finals, Bloomington South has won a couple, LC made a semistate run in the first year of class hoops. FC had its runs with JaJuan Johnson. One could argue Conference Indiana was the best basketball league in the state - or even with the MIC - in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

8-man football isn't another sport, it's simply an addition to boys football. Title IX won't be an issue. Lacrosse would work, but their teams don't want the IHSAA to sponsor it because they don't want to give up playing on Sundays.

Yes. I've been to the last three home games and fans have been in every level. Capped at 12,500. They're very well spread-out.

Yes. it was fought tooth and nail when the 1.5 multiplier was proposed, with lawsuits threatened and religious discrimination being discussed as a reason to fight it.

Danville & Tri-West both need to grow a lot before they join the Mid-State. Both are 3A (Danville on the border of 4A) and most of the Mid-State is 5A (and in PM's case, 6A) and growing a lot faster than those two schools. Whiteland is also on the 6A borderline and Franklin won't be too far behind. Danville & TW might outgrow the Sagamore someday, as they outgrew the old West Central Conference in the late 1990s, but I don't see the Mid-State in their future.

One idea I've heard floated in other states - to use the higher number of your school's enrollment OR the average enrollment of your opponents (largest & smallest excepted so playing Carmel doesn't skew the numbers).

They would say "we're pretty happy in the Hoosier Heritage Conference right now" and politely decline. The Mid-State had been at 7 teams for a while. They wouldn't have been turned away had they shown interest.

Coach Chambers is fantastic and the turnaround he engineered at Marion was very impressive. It's hard to build a feeder program for an IPS school with the way their schools are set up (a junior high doesn't necessarily feed one high school), the difficult socioeconomic circumstances and a very fluid population ... and also with the reality that a lot of the athletes end up at Cathedral, Chatard and Scecina and a few others will head to a charter school (or transfer out of district to a township school).

I know for a fact NP, G-C and MV are not looking for another conference right now.