Last week, the Georgia High School Association (GHSA) crowned 16 state champions across boys and girls basketball at the Macon Coliseum.
It was anything but smooth sailing, though, as there were some noticeable blunders along the way from the GHSA itself.
I’ll start with the low hanging fruit concerning the Drew Charter vs. Social Circle fiasco that occurred.
When the two teams faced in the Final Four on March 5, Drew Charter seemed to have won 70-66 in overtime. However, after watching the NFHS Network live stream, two magical points appeared on the scoreboard for Drew Charter in the second quarter.
After watching the game’s full replay, the game really should’ve ended with a 56-54 win for Social Circle in regulation. Nothing was done about it.
Prior to the Final Four round, the GHSA made a self-inflicting move that was met with opposition.
On March 2, the GHSA announced a last-minute change to the bracket’s
Final Four schedule. It switched Berkmar boys’ scheduled game to be played on Saturday, March 5 instead of Friday, March 4 like it had been scheduled for months.
According to Will Hammock of the Gwinnett Daily Post, the GHSA made the switch to let Norcross’ girls and boys team play back-to-back games on Friday, March 4, instead of playing across two days.
The move caused an understandable uproar from other teams, such as Berkmar, who labeled it as ‘blatant favoritism.’
It would’ve affected the Newton boys team, too.
With the Rams defeating Archer in the Elite Eight on Wednesday, March 2, the original schedule had them getting two days of preparation for the Final Four. However, the alteration would’ve given the Rams only one day of preparation.
The GHSA eventually backtracked on its move and stuck with the original schedule, but it was still a blunder on the GHSA’s part, which caused an unnecessary uproar.
I will admit, this last part is nitpicky, but I think it is still worth mentioning.
Multiple times I have noticed that the GHSA’s bracket online reported the final score of a game wrong. Two times, in particular, had me second guessing my own reporting.
According to the GHSA bracket, Newton defeated Archer in the Elite Eight 57-49 — the final score was 59-47. Then, in the final four round, GHSA had it where Norcross won over Newton 58-55. Really, the Rams lost 75-72, which is a huge discrepancy.
Now, I know a win is a win regardless if it’s 1-0 or 100-0 and I’m sure the GHSA got the final scores based on third parties posting them on Maxpreps. However, I think the 16 teams who won it all this season deserve to have a copy of the bracket that correctly states the outcome of each contest on their way to a state title.
Frankly, I wholeheartedly believe that each player, coach and team deserves better than what the GHSA did the past few weeks for the basketball state tournament. There is plenty of madness already in March for the teams in playoff contention. The GHSA doesn’t need to add to it.
So, instead of focusing on the 16 teams who endured all the challenges the 2021-22 season had to bring and still claimed a state championship, here I am writing about the blunders of the GHSA.
Phillip B. Hubbard is sports editor for The Covington News. Reach him at phubbard@covnews.com
