Alaska's tiniest schools will get a giant-sized state basketball tournament beginning in 2013.
The Alaska School Activities Association is doubling the size of the Class 1A state basketball tournament from 16 boys and girls teams to 32.
The supersized tournament will feature 52 games at three locations over a five-day span in Anchorage, ASAA's board of directors decided at a two-day meeting in Sitka earlier this week.
Expansion will coincide with classification changes that go into effect in the 2012-13 school year. Those changes, which determine whether a school is Class 4A, 3A, 2A or 1A, will raise the high school enrollment cap for 1A schools to 60 students from 50 -- meaning more schools than ever will be playing 1A basketball.
Currently, 80 schools play 1A basketball, giving teams a one in 10 chance of making the state tournament. Those odds would have worsened if the tournament had not expanded, because ASAA officials expect Class 1A to add about 10 to 20 schools as a result of reclassification.
And so an expanded 1A will come with an expanded 1A basketball tournament -- and the challenge of fitting everything into March Madness Alaska, the weeklong hoops-o-rama that crowns state champions in all four classifications.
The current setup for March Madness Alaska -- six days, eight eight-team tournaments and 88 games at Sullivan Arena -- leaves no room for more games, ASAA executive director Gary Matthews said.
And so March Madness will begin two days earlier than usual, on a Saturday.
First-round 1A games will be played Saturday at two still-undetermined locations because Sullivan isn't available that day and no place else in Anchorage has a floor big enough to divide into two courts, which is how ASAA manages to keep everything at Sullivan now.
The first-round games will be sort of like NCAA play-in games -- only the losers won't be eliminated.
The winners will advance to an eight-team championship bracket that will be identical to the current tournament. They'll play a double-elimination, three-day tournament that runs from Monday to Wednesday at Sullivan.
Losers of first-round games will drop into an eight-team single-elimination tournament that also runs Monday through Wednesday. The first two days will be at a high school or UAA, and the final game -- the consolation championship -- will be Wednesday at Sullivan Arena.
"We don't want a team that loses the first day to say, 'It's over for us.' You can still play at Sullivan Arena on Wednesday; you just have to work your tail off to get there," Matthews said.
The new format means a team must win four tournament games to capture a 1A championship. And the team that wins the consolation championship will boast a 3-1 tournament record, the same as the teams that claim the third-place and fourth-place trophies.
In other actions during the two-day meeting this week in Sitka, the ASAA board of directors:
• Decided to schedule the Class 4A and 3A state basketball tournaments on Thursday, Friday and Saturday for the next three years, rather than flip-flopping the format so the 1A and 2A schools get to play on the weekend every other year.
Isaiah Vreeman, ASAA's director of special events, said tournament attendance dropped at the 2010 tournament, the first and only time the small schools played on the coveted weekend dates.
"When the raw data came in, there was a 1,300-person difference between this year and last year," Vreeman said. "That was a very big deciding factor. I can't speak for the board, but basically there were 1,300 people who didn't have the opportunity to see (the tournaments) the year before."
The unofficial attendance numbers, according to Vreeman:
In 2010, the Class 1A and 2A tournaments were held Thursday through Saturday and drew 6,200 in paid attendance. The Class 3A and 4A tournaments were Monday through Wednesday and drew 8,300.
This year, the 1A and 2A tournaments were Monday through Wednesday and drew 6,800. The 3A and 4A tournaments were Thursday through Saturday and drew 9,600.
• Adopted a playoff structure for next fall, when a third classification is added for football.
Just 31 schools play football, but a third division was deemed necessary because of the huge enrollment disparities that exist with just two classifications. The 15-team large-school division stays the same but the 16-team small-school division -- which includes schools ranging in size from Monroe (121 students) to Soldotna (549) -- will become a nine-team medium-school division and a seven-team small-school division.
The medium and small divisions will hold four-team playoffs with semifinals hosted by the higher seeds and the championships at Tom Huffer Sr. Stadium in Chugiak. The winner of the three-team Southeast Conference will be a top seed in the medium-school division, marking the first time Ketchikan, Sitka or Thunder Mountain get to stay home for a playoff game.
Matthews said he hopes the small-school numbers might grow now that the state's tiniest football schools no longer have to face teams three or four times their size in the playoffs.
"Those small schools, those emerging programs, were being thwarted just because they knew whoever they got in that first-round game, they were gonna get thumped," Matthews said. "We'd like to see Glennallen get back into football again, and there's some talk about Su Valley getting a team. Being able to compete at their own level is a big factor."
Reach Beth Bragg at bbragg@adn.com or 257-4335.
By BETH BRAGG
bbragg@adn.com