(3-24-24) While Ohio has decided to add three more basketball divisions, making it seven in total. The decision to add three new divisions was approved by the board of directors (9-0) and the membership did not have the opportunity to vote on the issue. Why the change?

When announcing the move to seven divisions — OHSAA Executive Director Doug Ute said –

“It’s the right thing to do for the student-athletes who have been competing at this disadvantage. For too long, the largest schools in our divisions have been so much larger than the smaller schools in the same division, which has resulted in many schools accepting that they realistically have little chance at making a run in the tournament. In some of our sports, there have been more than 200 schools competing for a state title in that division, which is significantly more than what most other states do, and what we do in many of our own sports.

Indiana, known for the ‘Milan Miracle‘, that was the basis for the popular movie ‘Hoosiers’, dropped the single tournament in 1998 for a four class tournament.

While Kentucky continues to have a single tournament, from the biggest schools to the smallest schools…known as the ‘Sweet 16’.

Lyon County is the smallest school (has an enrollment of just 293 students) in 40 years to win the Kentucky high school basketball state championship.

The Lyons defeated Harlan County Saturday night 67-58 to win the program’s first ever state title.

When asked about changing the tournament format and adding new divisions…Lyon County coach Ryan Perry told the Lexington Herald-Leader —

“Don’t mess with it. The tournament is so good the way it is. We lost the last two years to big schools, but we wouldn’t trade it for anything. This is what it’s all about. Little schools doing something like this every now and then, and to have two schools like that, Lyon County and Harlan County going at it? It’s just amazing.”

Kentucky is one of only two states, along with Delaware, that crowns just one champion in its state’s basketball tournaments.

2024 Delaware Interscholastic Athletic Association (DIAA) State Champions

Dover enrollment 1,895 and Salesianum 915

Kentucky starts with District tournaments with the finalists from each of the 64 districts advancing to the 16 regional tournaments, with the region tournament winners advancing to Rupp Arena and the Sweet 16. Just remember there is no class system.

The Rupp Arena crowds at this year’s tournament justify having the tournament format set up this way —

This year’s championship game drew 13,568 fans, with a four-day attendance total of 99,915.

That’s the biggest crowd for the tournament since 2014 (101,683) and a small increase from last year’s (99,565) total.

The 2023 and 2024 tournaments have averaged about 6,000 more fans than the tournaments played from 2015-2019,…2021 (47,686) and 2022 (85,049) editions.

The numbers for this year are quite impressive when you realize that Harlan County ranks as the 2nd poorest county in Kentucky while Lyon County’s entire population is 8,721.