IHSAA tourneys should be seeded

Almost 4,500 high school girls basketball games have been played by Indiana teams this season.
The number will be about the same for boys basketball when its regular-season comes to an end in a few weeks.
Why?
I ask this because the results just don’t matter.
A team can go 21-2 and end up ranked second in the state, as Homestead did, and be forced to play an opening-round tournament game against the second-best team (by record) in its sectional group, as Homestead will tonight.
Meanwhile, another team can go 3-19, including a run of 13 straight defeats, as Logansport did, and have the good fortune of playing a five-win opponent in the first round of the tournament, as Logansport will tonight.
And so on Friday, either Homestead or Muncie Central (18-5) will be at home while either Logansport or Lafayette Jefferson (5-18) will be playing in a sectional semifinal, not because one played especially poorly or another especially well, but because some ping pong balls said so.
This is the insanity of a tournament bracket determined by blind draw.
So I ask again, why have we played the approximately 9,000 regular-season girls and boys basketball games this year?
We play them so teams can get better over the course of the year, obviously.
But should there not be some sort of reward for those that excel? Should the best teams not have the opportunity to earn a bye, rather than having their fate determined by the luck of the draw?
What is so frustrating is that a solution is not difficult: Seed the tournaments, not just for basketball but for all team sports.
There are any number of ways to achieve this, but the following is my suggestion:
• Divide each class into four geographically-logical regions of approximately 24 teams each. (Forget about sectional groups. They’re unnecessary.)
• Use the Sagarin ratings, which are already available for basketball — http://sagarin.com/sports/girlsend.htm — to assign four No. 1 seeds, four No. 2 seeds, and so on, in each region. (Or coaches could vote, as they do in Ohio. Or a tournament selection panel of coaches, media and IHSAA representatives could be formed. There’s no shortage of possibilities.)
• Assign teams to tournament sites in similar fashion to the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments.
I took the liberty of rearranging Jay County’s, which includes the sectionals currently played at East Noble, Homestead, McCutcheon and Westfield.
Those brackets, as determined by the IHSAA ping pong randomness, include the first-round Homestead/Muncie Central and Logansport/Lafayette Jefferson games mentioned above. Five of the eight teams that drew opening-round byes having losing records, including 3-19 Lafayette Harrison.
In my brackets, the top eight seeds — Homestead (21-2), Carmel (19-4), Noblesville (22-4), Westfield (20-3), Zionsville (17-3), Huntington North (18-6), Muncie Central (18-5) and Hamilton Southeastern (11-10), which benefits from its strength of schedule — get byes. Meanwhile, third-seeded Jay County (19-4), which is hurt by its strength of schedule, would play sixth-seeded Lafayette Jefferson (5-18).
The result is a balanced tournament in which the best teams get what they deserve — a reward for a strong regular season — while those that struggled still have every opportunity to write their Cinderella story if they play well enough.
In my equitably-seeded tournament, no six-team group has more than 82 wins or less than 71. In the IHSAA bracket of randomness, the Homestead sectional squads are a combined 94-41 (.648) while those that will play at McCutcheon are just 52-80 (.394).
The numbers speak for themselves.
Admittedly, there are some challenges to the seeded system, many of them geographical. (For instance, in my revised bracket Jay County and Wayne would both be playing at Westfield.) But those could be solved by centrally locating tournament host sites within a region.
One of the great things about sports is that they are all about merit. You get what you earn.
Unfortunately, in an unseeded tournament draw, nothing is earned. Every team is equal in the eyes of a ping pong ball.
It’s time to make the change to a seeded tournament, even if it would add to the IHSAA’s workload to do so.
That way, when asked why we played those 9,000 regular-season games, we can give a legitimate answer.