Coach‘s Corner appears throughout the season at Outside the Huddle. The author Bob Lapadot coached for 28 years. He spent the last 12 years of his coaching career as the girls basketball head coach at Garrett, where he went 193-91 and won three Sectional titles and one Regional title.
Sectional time in Indiana is one of the best times of the year. Hoosier Hysteria is something coaches, players, and fans all look forward to. For coaches, this time of the year is a balancing act of finishing the regular season and preparing for the postseason.
Our postseason begins with the annual sectional pairing show. Many teams will meet that Sunday evening and watch the draw together. After the draw is when the balancing act really begins because all the focus has just been on the postseason, but you still have a week of your regular season left, and some teams are still trying to accomplish their regular season goals of winning conference titles.
As for the draw itself, every coach wants the easiest road to the championship game. Don’t let them fool you with “coach speak” about how it doesn’t matter who they play, or we have to play them sometime. Coaches want byes and they want the best match ups possible to get to the next round.
If you don’t get that ideal draw, and you do get the best team, or the sectional favorite, playing them in the first game does have a couple advantages. It gives you some extra time to scout them again and prepare for them.
Fans want to see the best two teams play in championship game, but for coaches, that 24 hour turn around time from Friday night’s semi finals to Saturday’s championship, can be tough, especially if you want to make a lot of adjustments for the final game. Playing the toughest team first, while not what we want, can have some advantages in preparation.
Another advantage of playing the favorite first is they might be feeling the nerves and pressure a little bit more in that first game. There can be some anxiety that builds for the favorite leading up to the start of the tournament. That tends to ease a little bit as you get into the flow of the week, but that first game can be tough, and if you’re the underdog, and you can get off to a good early start, that first game can get interesting really fast.
When we were in 2A our sectional was totally comprised of NECC schools so that made tournament prep pretty easy the years we played in that conference. As we transitioned into 3A, and out of the NECC sectional, we had to adjust our regular season schedule to get as many of our new sectional opponents on the schedule as possible. Playing sectional opponents in the regular season isn’t always possible, but a lot of coaches try to schedule as many as possible so you have a better feel for teams as you start the 3 games in 4 or 5 days sectional run. Any advantages in scouting and preparation is welcome in the craziness of sectional week.
Home court advantage is another perk some teams get during the sectional. The lack of travel can really help in a long week of games. We won 3 of our 4 sectionals on the road though, and I found our team was really able to focus when going on the road and the trips really bonded our teams and helped to keep us calm and in the moment. We really embraced the bus rides, extra time together, and the ability to worry about nothing but winning.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the one factor that no coach, player, or fan can control, and that’s weather. From a Polar Vortex to a blizzard, we had multiple sectional games cancelled because of weather conditions. On our run to the semi state in 2021-22 we were out of school and couldn’t practice for a couple days leading up to our Friday night semi final game. That was very difficult to deal with because we couldn’t get in the gym and we had to find ways to stay locked in mentally while nothing in our daily lives was normal.
Everything about the Indiana basketball state tournament brings excitement to every team, school, and town in the state. The only bad part is your next loss is your last loss and as a coach, that’s just one more thing to balance along this journey. Keeping everyone focused and living in the moment is so important. Don’t look ahead, trying to think about the entire week at one time is overwhelming, just focus on the next play and leave it all on the floor.
Winning a sectional championship will hang a banner in the rafters and put a trophy in your school’s trophy case that will be there forever. This is a goal every team has, but it’s a journey. You have to stay in the moment, take it one game at a time, and balance all the emotions of playing for a championship.
Good luck to all the coaches and teams as they enter the best 4 weeks of the season! As I told my teams over the years, from now on…Saturday’s are for championships!
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