Wild card system is a little too wild

The Westside varsity girls basketball team has missed the state basketball tournament for the first time since 2014, and it’s not because the Warriors had a bad season.  The team managed to finish the season with a 22-4 record, earning themselves impressive regular season wins over 2016 state runner-up Millard West and Omaha Northwest; the 2017 A-3 district champions.

The Nebraska School Activities Association (NSAA) has had a wild card system in place for more than two decades based off their strength of schedule which ultimately ends up being their opponent’s win percentage.  Westside’s 22-4 finish this season earned them 43.1154 wildcard points which was good enough to finish in third place according to the NSAA’s public records.  When Millard South was upset by Kearney in their district final, they picked up the wildcard spot in the tournament because they had a .0769 point advantage on the Warriors.

Mike Patterson, a man who’s been writing for the Omaha World-Herald since 1988, says relying on this system is not a good idea.

“Coaches often tell me they never want to rely on the wild card to reach state because there are so many intangibles they can’t control,” Patterson said.

In all classes below class A, the NSAA bases district brackets on geography.  So, perennial girls basketball powerhouses in class B such as Elkhorn and Elkhorn South are more than likely to get pitted in the same district.  Having a wild card allows the one that loses that to still have championship hopes.

In class A, however, districts are aligned by Wild Card points. The worst team in the state will have to travel to the best, and it works that way throughout all the districts as you keep going down the list.  Because this is the way it works, teams in Class A seem to have a better chance of getting through their district. Dirk Chatelain, a sports columnist who writes at the Omaha World-Herald, said the wild card system serves useless because of the way the districts are aligned.

Because of the way the NSAA’s system works, wild card points are easy to come by.  The system is based off a team’s strength of schedule, so the only control that team has is the outcomes of their games.  Evidently, they would earn more points for winning than for losing.  This system would work out in the classes below Class A because the geographically close powerhouses get pitted against each other in the postseason, but in class A the competition for the better teams isn’t as high.