Nearly a dozen No. 1-seeded basketball teams from Middle and South Georgia are coming north this week for the quarterfinals of the state tournament, all the result of losing a coin toss that some might view as unfair.
But not many are complaining on the eve of Georgia high school basketball’s elite eight.
Utaff Gordon, boys coach for Class AAA’s second-ranked Johnson Atomshashers of Savannah, says he’s inspired about his team’s trip to fourth-ranked Greater Atlanta Christian of Gwinnett County on Wednesday.
‘’At church yesterday, the sermon that our guest pastor conferred with the congregation about was: STOP TRIPPIN' and START TRUSTING!’’ Gordon said in an e-mail Monday morning. “My take on this is that I no longer concern myself with that which I cannot control. I trust that the basketball team that l have can play ‘ANYWHERE’ and get the job done. We are SMASHER STRONG and we just want the RINGS!!!!’’
Gordon copied Bakari Bryant, coach of Savannah arch-rival Jenkins, who responded, ‘’Amen!!!!’’
Jenkins, ranked No. 3, is traveling to fifth-ranked Cedar Grove in DeKalb County. The Savannah teams will be riding buses for some four hours Wednesday.
Jenkins was the Region 3-AAA runner-up to Johnson while Cedar Grove is the Region 5-AAA champion, so Cedar Grove’s home-court advantage is earned.
But Johnson is one of five boys teams that won their regions but must travel into North Georgia for having lost a coin flip. The others are Coffee at Hughes, Warner Robins to Lithonia, Upson-Lee to LaFayette, Johnson-Savannah to Greater Atlanta Christian and Central-Macon to Morgan County.
Six girls region champions are traveling into North Georgia. They are Valdosta to Douglas County, Peach County to Franklin County, Tattnall County to Haralson County, Dodge County to Model, Laney to Banks County and Beach to Greater Atlanta Christian.
None of the North Georgia region champions are going south. That’s because the GHSA recently adopted what it calls a universal coin flip to decide home-court advantage when two region champions face off. That happens only in the quarterfinals. There’s always a higher-seeded team that earns home-court edge in the first two rounds, and the final two rounds (the semifinals and finals) are played on neutral floors.
The coin toss, conducted last Thursday in the GHSA offices, decides whether teams listed higher, or lower, on the bracket are home when the game involves same-seeded teams. The way the brackets are drawn, the outcome of the flip will heavily favor north Georgia teams or south Georgia teams. This year, the coin pointed north.
The GHSA used to let the two competing schools do their own coin tosses, which resulted in a mix of North Georgia and South Georgia home teams. But those coin tosses usually required that the two coaches meet somewhere in between for the toss, which was deemed a waste of time.
The single universal coin toss settles the issue quickly for all, but an unintended consequence was the chance that one part of the state would get most of the games. Trust is an issue when it comes to north-south issues.
Beach girls coach Olufemi Gordon, whose defending Class AAA championship team must travel to No. 1-ranked Greater Atlanta Christian for a Tuesday game, said she didn’t have an issue with the coin toss itself or even the potential regional consequences of the GHSA’s rule.
‘’My issue is that no one from the south was there to witness the flip,’’ Gordon said. “It is very possible that several flips could have been recorded until the coin landed on the most ‘favorable’ side. Having representatives from each side present or performing a live video coin flip seems to be the most honorable way to do it.’’
But like her boys counterparts at Jenkins and Savannah, Gordon isn’t afraid to play on the road. Her team won at Central-Macon in the 2017 quarterfinals on the way to the state championship.
And it was GAC, her team’s opponent on Tuesday, that had to come to Savannah for a semifinal last year at Savannah’s Armstrong State. That was supposed to be a neutral floor, but the AAA semifinals just happened to be in Savannah, as they will be again this year.
Beach defeated GAC 56-47 in that one. This time, GAC gets the rematch at home, thanks to one good coin flip.
