IHSA approves basketball state final format change

The Illinois High School Association announced Monday that the basketball state finals will be held on one three-day weekend starting in 2021.

The tournaments were previously held over two two-day weekends. Under the new format all four classes are expected to play title games on the same Saturday.

“There has been a great deal of support for this new tournament format over the past few months,” IHSA Executive Director Craig Anderson said in a statement. “We tried to be as transparent as possible, communicating the idea and seeking feedback from basketball coaches and school administrators throughout the state in a variety of ways. It was fairly unanimous that most felt like it was idea worth trying.”

The current format will continue for one more year and the one-weekend format will go into effect in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Under the new format each class will still have four state teams qualify for the state finals. The number of games each day and the times are still to be determined. Both the boys and girls tournaments will switch to the new Thursday-Saturday schedule, which will also lead to schedule changes for regionals, sectionals and super sectionals. The boys tournament is expected to take place before the NCAA basketball tournament begins.

The IHSA also announced it will soon start accepting bids to host the new format tournaments in 2021. The boys currently play at Carver Arena in Peoria, the girls at Illinois State University’s Redbird Arena.

“We obviously have great relationships with both venues and host communities,” Anderson said. “We fully expect both to bid once again, but believe it’s only fair to open up the process in conjunction with these format changes so that they can evaluate if and how it impacts them. We are not tied to any host format. We’d be open to having both tournaments at the same venue or continuing to have them in separate venues.”

The three-day weekend idea was first floated back in February. The IHSA confirmed to the Sun-Times that third place games would remain and all four title games would be played on Saturday.

That makes it fairly easy to assemble a likely schedule:

THURSDAY

Afternoon session
1A semifinal
1A semifinal

Night session
2A semifinal
2A semifinal

FRIDAY

Morning session
1A third place
2A third place

Afternoon session
3A semifinal
3A semifinal

Night session
4A semifinal
4A semifinal

SATURDAY

Morning session
3A third place
4A third place

Afternoon/Night session
1A championship
2A championship
3A championship
4A championship