Basketball Committee Recap from Wednesday, Feb. 7

AURORA – The Colorado High School Activities Association’s basketball committee met yesterday, and while the committee has proposed some changes to postseason scheduling, there was no official action taken regarding the shot clock.
 
With the committee – a different group than who served on the committee in 2022-23 – split in support for/against the shot clock, it ultimately decided it would encourage leagues to bring proposals to the Legislative Council meeting to discuss and vote on in April.
 
“With the committee split on support with this controversial topic, they decided it would be best to hear from membership on what exactly they want,” said CHSAA Associate Commissioner Bethany Brookens, who oversees basketball. “We encourage schools and athletic directors to talk with their coaches, school personnel, and other leagues and districts now so that they can come to Legislative Council in April with an understanding of what scenarios and proposals they would support.”
 
The committee did make some proposed changes to the playoff schedules for each of the classifications:

• For 2A and 3A, districts would be eliminated. Teams would now be true seeded onto a 32-team bracket, the regular-season would extend by one week and the maximum game limit would increase from 19 games to 23 games.
• 1A would keep districts but tweak the regional seeding criteria. District champions would continue to be guaranteed a top-8 (regional host slot) as long as they are in the top-12 (not 16) of the CHSAA Seeding & Selection Index after Districts.  
• 4A would move to a true-seeded regional format for the first two rounds of the 32-team bracket. This change would extend the regular-season by one week and move the Great 8 games to the final week of the championships (similar to the current format for 1A-3A).
• 5A and 6A would increase their bracket size from 32 teams to 40 teams. The top-24 teams would receive a first-round bye and this would add a third-round game during the week of Great 8.

 
These proposals will be voted on at the Legislative Council meeting in April, and if approved, changes would go into effect for the 2024-25 basketball season.