12-15-2020
BY JACK BULLOCK
One of the hot topics when it comes to high school athletics in Illinois the past 13 years has been the implement of four-class basketball.

Although the discussions are fewer now since dust has settled on the issue in the season's since, it is still something that gets brought up from time-to-time.

Whether you are or were “for it” or “against it” it has, and continues to be, a subject of interest when it comes to coaches, media members and fans.

Although it has been accepted as we hopefully will get a 14th season of it at some point, there are still “old school” folks who yearn for the return of two-class basketball.

It has been clear by looking at state tournament attendance that fans overall don't like it.

They don't like it at all.

What were once sellout (and near sellout) crowds at Peoria's Carver Arena are now borderline ghost towns when it comes to attendance at the Final Four versus the two-class Elite Eight set up.

I recall vividly the first four-class finals in 2007-08 and the emptiness of Carver Arena in the second half of the title game between Chicago North Lawndale and Peoria Manual.

In fact the norm of the state finals up until 2006-07 were large crowds and extreme anticipation for the eight teams from different areas of the state competing for a state championship.

The 2008 third place game between Olney East Richland and Pinckneyville was sort of well attended but nothing like the previous years where the final two games of Class A had 10,000-plus fans on the edge of their seats.

Most of the fans there were Olney and Pinckneyville supporters.

At halftime of the title game the third and fourth place awards were handed out.

Afterwards, before the second half began, the fans of Olney and Pinckneyville left in mass unison.

By the time the third quarter resumed there were less than 500 people (eyeball estimate) watching the state championship game in the stands.

Sights like that have continued with different extremes throughout the past 12 seasons with 2019-20 being the Covid19 exception.

The crowds have been fair to good, but the state tournament crowds should be great.

I, for one, was for the four-class expansion at the time.

Growing up in a small town at a small high school I understood the problems that a school of the 1A size had against larger Class A (usually under 700 students at the time) teams.

I didn't believe that four-class basketball would kill the popularity of the most cherished of high school sports in this state.

As I have freely admitted over the years, I was wrong.

Although like “Fonzie” it is tough for me to say.

Whether or not any of the 1A regional, sectional, super-sectional or Final Four teams would have had success in the two-class system is open for debate.

However given the status of how things were the previous 14 seasons, it is unlikely that these good small school teams would have advanced very far in the Class A state tournament in the old two-class format.

The System Change

This origin of the switch in formats stems from a questionnaire sent out by the Illinois High School Association in the fall/winter of 2005.

It simply asked if the membership schools (752 members at the time) would be in favor of switching from two-class to four-class for state tournaments in boy's and girl's basketball, baseball, softball and volleyball.

Boys and girls track, boys golf, boys and girls cross-country would end up being three classes.

As it turned out, just 57 percent (roughly 400 schools) sent in the questionnaire to the IHSA board.

Which meant that 43 percent of the schools chose not to reply.

The reasoning behind not filling it out varies from school to school.

At the time when arguing about the change I used a line out of the song “Freewill” by Canadian rock band “Rush” to convey my opinion.

“If you chose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

Of the 57 percent who filled it out, 64 percent of the responses favored going to four-classes.

On Wednesday, January 11, 2006 the IHSA board voted 7-2 to make the switch.

People over the years have shown varying degrees of anger towards the shift in formats but 13 years later here we are.

The New Big Conference

In 1993-94 the landscape in southern Illinois boy's high school basketball changed dramatically.

The combination of schools that were formerly in different leagues, with one independent, decided to form one large super league.

This produced the Southern Illinois River-to-River Conference with two separate divisions; the Mississippi and Ohio.

Anna-Jonesboro, Chester, DuQuoin, Murphysboro, Nashville, Pinckneyville and Sparta were all in the now defunct Southwest Egyptian Conference while Massac County (formerly Metropolis HS) was an independent at the time.

Benton, Harrisburg, Herrin and West Frankfort were all members of the larger school league the South Seven Conference with Carbondale, Centralia, Marion and Mt. Vernon.

The Ohio Division side has remained intact with Benton, Harrisburg, Herrin, Massac County, Murphysboro and West Frankfort.

Chester and Carterville swapped places in 2010-11 with the Lions coming in from the Black Diamond Conference and the Yellow Jackets leaving to the West Division of the BDC.

Herrin being the largest of the conference currently sits at enrollment of 745 while the smallest is currently Sparta at 343.

Sparta announced last summer that they would be leaving the SIRR Conference for a spot in the expansion of the Cahokia Conference, beginning in 2021-22.

With their collective enrollments dropping, those four South Seven schools felt they could no longer compete with those larger schools and decided to make a change.

These schools were simply doing what they thought was best for their sports programs.

No one should fault them for that.

In the postseason they just took advantage of the situation (hand) that was dealt to them.

The Postseason Monsters

The 1993-94 school year is when this conglomerate of sports programs took control of IHSA boy's basketball Class A postseason's in southern Illinois.

The numbers deliver the message loud and clear.

In the 14 years of the SIRR from its inception to the ending of two-class basketball there were 112 Class A Regionals that fed into the Carbondale Super-sectional.

Of those 112, 107 of those regionals had at least one SIRR member competing in it.

Of those 107 regional champions, 51 of the champs (47.6 percent) were from either the Mississippi Division or the Ohio Division.

That doesn't sound too bad if you say it fast.

The SIRR hosted 42 of those regionals.

But the numbers bare more fruit the closer you look into the results.

In those 14 years there were 28 sectional champions in the Carbondale complex of teams

Nineteen of those sectional champs were SIRR teams.

Of that 19, six of the sectional titlists won the sectional on their home floor.

Of the 14 super-sectionals played, 11 of the winners were from the Mississippi or the Ohio.

Seven of the supers featured SIRR Mississippi vs. SIRR Ohio teams.

Only twice during this run were there no SIRR teams in the super; 1996 Breese Mater Dei defeated Pope County and 1999 Waterloo Gibault beat Johnston City.

All of the other supers had at least one team from the SIRR.

Of the five other supers that pitted SIRR vs. Others; the SIRR won four of the games by a combined 67 points.

Cairo defeated Benton in the 2003 Carbondale Super-sectional for the league's only loss.

But the stat that made my eyes pop out of the sockets is this one.

Of the 107 regionals, there were 24 regionals won by SIRR teams in which that school was the only one from the league in that particular regional.

Twenty-four. Meaning that of the five, six or seven team regionals at the time, the one team from the SIRR advanced.

Not only were they the best teams, but they also had most of the best facilities in southern Illinois so they got to host most of the postseason sectionals.

Of the 28 sectionals, 21 were hosted by SIRR schools.

To conclude it isn't a stretch to look at these results and then understand why schools voted for a change.

I can't vouch for the rest of the state, but in Little Egypt it was the big schools who made the decision an easy one.

Format Change?

A move back to Champaign (which was supposed to happen in 2020-21) could certainly help give attendance a boost.

However it is very unlikely that the state tournament will ever return to the glory days of two-class basketball.

As Yoda would say …. “holding my breath, I am not.”

EDITOR'S NOTE: This column was written before the SIRR had a meeting about their future and has nothing to do with the timing of that meeting. As always the opinions expressed by ABV are not necessarily the same as the fine sponsors of this web publication.