PIAA first round "A"

[Oldskoolhoops]

Yeah Johnsonburg may not look like much on paper but with wins over North Catholic, Smethport, Ridgway twice who has big guys, and absolutely crushing d9AA champ I think they have proven they can play. 3 guys drill 3's and they run the drive and kick for the 3 to perfection. Good defense and few turnovers.

[sppawfan]

I am not saying north catholic is better than johnsonburg, all I am saying is shade has trouble with teams with height that can get physical matchup wise. I like the way they match up with john. because of shades quick guard play and big walker to out muscle any 6-1 to 5-8 kid which is what john. has. Shade can run and shoot 3,s also with any of the 5 starters. They play tough man defense and that team will have trouble getting open 3,s. I was talking matchups. I know john. is good and saw they can shoot, but shade will match up well with them with that tough man in face defense and their quick guards with fyock and walker jumping ability to block their shots. fyock and walker dunk easily. They can get up. They will be hard for them to guard if they are 6-1 to 5-8 lineup. jmo. I still believe any team can beat any team on any given day especially hoops because 1 off night by a team or 1 night of being hot will get it done for a team to win or lose a game. Also coaching and matchups come into play just like leshko outcoached nbcs coach to help them win.

[SHSGIRL]

Good analysis. Looks like Jnsbg is similar to Shade on paper. May be closer than I thought. Off to north Catholic...tough game. I see they lost by 1 pt and 9pt to Vincentian who very well may be the best in the west. Kudos to the Shade team and coach Fyock for a great season. I'm sure he will have them prepared.

[sppawfan]

Thanks, but believe me, I know all schools at this point will be tough to beat. If you look ahead, you will get knocked off. I want to see how fyock handles these two 6-4 250lb kids under the hoop. Last time he faced two like this, serra catholic beat them at hempfield and shade had no answer. Not the fault of the coach because they didn't have but 1 tall guy and had to put berkey on the other kid and they ripped shade down low and came back and won the game. That other big kid didn't even start. He was put in when shade was up like 18-4 after 1 and it was all down hill from there. I still would have tried to pack a zone in when the man wasn't working, but I am sure fyock learned from this and will do what is needed to win over this team with the big kids. And that was the best shade team I ever saw that year with 4 1000 point scorers and the other 2 had like 900. It also had 3 somerset county mvps on it. They had to beat a 8th ranked southern fulton team in districts, then a tough nbc team and then a tough tussey mt. team to win districts. That is when the west pac was tough and districts were brutal. Most of the good teams now are at d5aa.

[sppawfan]

That is what scares me about shade playing the salisburys, meyersdale, turkeyfoots. They didn't play schools that gave them any battle. Ct and shanksville did along with berlin, but even these teams weren't their better teams in past history. I think shade with only nash walker back will be tops in the county the way these teams all lack talent. Berlin will be good and rockwood. I don't know about ct next year. Shanksville loses a lot also. Platt and ?.. hudak,ferko,young wilt... Just teams are not as good anymore. Where has the talent went from the older days??

[Laloosh]

Go ahead and underestimate Johnsonburg due to their lack of height. They might not have the kids going to UPJ or Juniata, but they have a kid or two who can play D-I sports(baseball). Now with that being said, a team with a good guard/center combo is the team that could give Johnsonburg trouble and it sounds like Shade has that. And don't underestimate NC either, just look at their schedule and compare it to Shade's. NC has been through some extremely tough games and never back down from playing an opponent in a higher classification. Should be some great games coming up. Good luck to all the teams.

[SHSGIRL]

The talent has gone to...hm...well, maybe where the jobs are. District 5 doesn't attract much much anymore. District 7 is a magnet for adults. And the kids?..... Lincoln Park a magnet for performing arts....yeah right.....basketball too. District 5 basketball coaching and programs are just as quality as the rest of the state. Alot of quality, talented kids just end up where the employment is.

[zonebreaker]

Seems kind of unfair to me that Bishop Carroll and Shanksville are both district runner ups yet Shanksville has an hr drive and the BC kids could walk to the gym (game's at central Cambria). I think this game would be much better suited to be played at Richland or UPJ.

The first round games are not about being fair or playing at neutral locations (every other round is). The district that has the higher seeded team (the one on top of the bracket) hosts the game. How do you get to be a higher-seeded team? It's about math not necessarily how good the teams are. d6#2 is a higher seed than d5#2 because d6#2 is second best team out of 18 teams in d6 while d5#2 is second best team out of 12 teams in d5.

Does anyone know who actually assigns the first-round games? I always thought it was the district officials who have the higher-seeded team (the district who hosts) because it always seems the games are played at sites to give the higher seeded team the best advantage most of the time.

Whoever it is, though, they can place that game wherever they want in that district's available gyms. If d6 had a fancy new stadium in state college they wanted to play the BC-Shanksville game in, they could play the game in state college. Usually since d6 has several facilities, the officials place the game as close as possible to the home d6 team to help that team (thus you see BC and NC playing at CC in the first round, BG/Hburg playing in Altoona, etc). I haven't followed d5 close enough in the past handful of years in bball. What do they do when a team from the far eastern side of d5 gets to host a first-round game. Would seem kind of silly to have Southern Fulton play at UPJ (although you could argue they were there for d5 championship so familiarity breeds advantage.) If I was from one of those schools, though, I would say put the game closer. UPJ and d5 is odd because UPJ is in d6 but it is recognized as d5 hosting site.

Everything changes in the second round when the PIAA assigns locations based on neutral sites, wanting a manageable site to be as near equidistant from schools as possible.

[Wrasslerfan]

http://piaa.org/assets/web/documents/20 ... B_Brax.pdf times are now listed

[zonebreaker]

Anyone know if IUP's Kovalchick/Ed Fry Arena would host a high school playoff game? I know they used Memorial Field House for playoff games last year. Never been in the new one. Wonder how nice it is? How loud it gets, etc