2 years into PIAA’s Black Friday start to basketball season, how are teams treating tip-off tournaments and what’s their future?
For more than 20 years, this weekend was the start of the PIAA basketball season.
Two weeks after Thanksgiving, that was the schedule.
But two years ago, the PIAA, under pressure to give winter sports a longer regular season to adjust for winter weather cancellations and postponements, tacked on two weeks and allowed winter teams to start their regular season on Black Friday.
However, unlike when football teams quickly adopted “Week 0” in the mid-2010s, there hasn’t been a flood of basketball teams rushing to start the year on the new opening weekend.
And swimming and wrestling teams appear to be almost completely avoiding the holiday weekend.
This year, tip-off tournaments were held during the holiday weekend — six Butler County teams competed at Geneva College, Armstrong, Montour, Leechburg and Woodland Hills — and last weekend. Five boys teams and five girls teams from the county area competed in last week’s tournaments, including Knoch’s girls playing both weekends in some variation of a tip-off tourney.
The Knights have played a county-high six games in the first 10 days of the season, ending Monday with a sixth straight loss to Mars. But now they have a week of practice before Game 7 against Burrell on Monday, Dec. 15.
The future of tip-off tournaments is unclear after talking to several boys and girls basketball coaches. Some, like Butler girls, are happy starting at Armstrong every year, even now on Black Friday. Others, like Karns City and Slippery Rock girls don’t want to start the season that early for a variety of reasons.
“You want to make sure you’re not putting your team at a competitive disadvantage as well,” said Mars boys coach Kobe Phillippi, whose team opened the season with a Dec. 2 road game at North Allegheny. “There’s a fine balance … it’s almost a year-to-year basis.”
Slippery Rock girls coach Jeff Steele said he doesn’t remember tip-off tournaments being common in the early 2000s. The Rockets have been hosting one for several years, but he isn’t sure if it will last. This year’s event was held on the second weekend of the calendar.
It can be difficult for him or other host schools to find three available teams, and he’s seen teams drop out of tournaments they’ve committed to last-minute because several players competed deep into the fall state playoffs in other sports, meaning valuable missed practice time or a short-handed roster.
That can be especially problematic for smaller schools with fewer athletes overall, but many who are multi-sport.
“I think (tip-off tournaments are) just gonna kind of go away,” Steele said. “If I was gonna pick, I would rather do a holiday tournament.”
The Rockets will play Dec. 29 and 30 in the Lakeview Holiday Classic.
Karns City girls coach Steve Andreassi said after the Gremlins’ season-opening win over Moniteau on Dec. 5, “We will never play on Black Friday and, besides, it’s the start of buck season. We’re not gonna mess with that.”
With nine freshmen on his team, Andreassi was in no hurry to cut season preparation work short.
“We have a lot of new faces, and I wanted the extra practice time to give us a chance to mesh a little bit more,” he said.
Which, as Phillippi said, can make it year-to-year for some teams. A veteran roster can jump into competition quicker and easier; for an inexperienced or young roster, is it best to start the season off with two back-to-back games off after just a couple weeks of open gyms and preseason practice?
“Man, that’s a lot of stuff you gotta review and enter and introduce to the team,” Butler girls coach Mark Maier said after his team’s 4-0 start but before Tuesday’s home-opening loss. “From that standpoint it’s a little bit higher pressure.”
He said he’s talked to coaches who don’t want to play on Black Friday, too. Andreassi cited the start of deer hunting season; Mars girls coach Zach Stitt said he likes giving his players and their families time enjoy the holiday weekend.
Nearly every coach said having no practice the day before a Black Friday tip-off tournament isn’t ideal.
“I still think it’s a decent mix of tip-offs versus teams waiting, technically,” Stitt said.
Mars’ girls are competing in a three-game holiday tournament at Garrett College (Md.) instead. Stitt likes the idea of getting three non-section games in against teams they don’t typically see.
So where do tip-off tournaments go from here?
Two years in, there aren’t signs programs are coalescing around a tip-off weekend. That’s unlike football’s “Week 0,” which saw a handful of teams opt for it the first year the PIAA added the week, then the majority of teams across the state the second year and nearly all by the third year.
Now, the PIAA keeps the moniker for the first regular-season week even though it’s almost universally adopted as Week 1.
It could take some time for basketball teams and coaches to settle on a new routine, or scattered tip-off tournaments could remain.
Steele threw out a different idea: showcases. Instead of a team playing two games in two days, they commit to a one-day event against one opponent and the host school can welcome more than three teams.
Showcases do exist during the regular season, including the District 9 Showcase at Clarion University in January, Karns City boys’ shootout during the holiday break and this weekend’s She Got Game Classic in Washington, D.C., where North Catholic and Seneca Valley girls are facing two non-PIAA teams in a non-tournament format.
“I like the idea of the shootout at Westminster or Slippery Rock University,” Steele said. “Have that kind of tip-off atmosphere where you’re watching games all day.”
But it’s unlikely the majority of schools would push to start Thanksgiving weekend, even in a showcase format. That leaves a likely scattershot approach, with different teams doing what works best for them.
