July 5, 2018 By Chris Varney
The Iowa High School Athletic Association released the playoff pairings for Class 3A baseball. For Grinnell, there was some good news. For Benton and South Tama, there was bad news.
First a little background. 3A is divided into 8 substates and the baseball coaches get together on Sunday, July 1 and the coaches determine the seeds in each substate, then send those recommendations to IHSAA who line up the locations of the games, giving priority to the top two seeds to host the first and second round games. Normally you would hope that the coaches would use the same sort of guidelines to determine the seeds but in this instance it was not the case.
For Grinnell, the Tigers got the second seed in substate #7 ahead of Knoxville who was the #3 seed. Last week, Knoxville beat Grinnell 5-4 and the Panthers had 20 wins going into the meeting. However, the coaches voted Grinnell ahead of Knoxville and the prevailing opinion was that the Tigers played a tougher strength of schedule. If you look at the team’s conferences, its no question — the Little Hawkeye is much more talented and deeper than the South Central. That is what swayed the coaches to vote Grinnell over Knoxville despite the game last week.
For South Tama and Benton, the Trojans were seeded 7th and the Bobcats 8th. At the time of the meeting, South Tama was 12-13 and Benton 10-18. Nevada, on the other hand, had a 12-9 record and they were seeded 6th. Why were the Cubs seeded ahead of South Tama and Benton? Nevada in the Heart of Iowa Conference and largely plays 2A teams, even some 1A teams. I only counted 7 games against 3A opponents. Benton and South Tama both play in the WaMaC against much tougher competition but strength of schedule was not taken into account in this case.
So which is it — record or strength of schedule? Two substates that were seeded completely different. Whichever way is the better of the two, it has to be consistent.
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