The Sun-Times obtained a copy of the new Chicago Public League basketball conference alignments on Thursday. There will be two “super conferences” next season.
One is the Red South-Central, which contains Bogan, Brooks, Vocational, Curie, Dunbar, Harlan, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Morgan Park and Simeon
The other is the Red North-West, which contains Farragut, Lincoln Park, Marshall, North Lawndale, Orr, Prosser, Uplift, Von Steuben, Westinghouse and Young.
The Green Division has been eliminated. The White Division will have four divisions: South, Central, North and West. Each division has ten teams. The Blue Division will also have four divisions.
Here is the full pdf sent out by the CPS today, it contains the conference alignments and the schedule:
CPS Conference Alignments and schedule
Teams will play conference opponents just one time. There will be a city championship tournament featuring 32 teams, all the teams from the Red and the top three teams from each White Division.
Simeon coach Robert Smith was not pleased with the change.
“It’s ridiculous,” Smith said. “I’m not in agreement with it. I don’t think it is paired up right. But I have to do what they say. We went away from this years ago because people complained about just playing once.”
Morgan Park coach Nick Irvin also wasn’t in favor of the change.
“They should have kept it like it was,” Irvin said. “It is still just one conference going at each other. I like the one game format because when the playoffs come you haven’t seen a team a bunch already. But looking at the South and Central, we are going to be beating each other’s heads in. They should have put Curie or Bogan over in the West.”
Young coach Tyrone Slaughter was initially in favor of the super conference idea, but this isn’t what he expected.
“This is not what I anticipated it being,” Slaughter said. “That other region is dramatically more super than ours is. When the thought of the super conference was first floated I was in total agreement if it meant taking the top tier teams in one group. We could have moved Curie to our conference to give it a little more credibility.”
