Does the Public League have a new basketball conference alignment?
High school boys basketball practice begins in a month, and Public League coaches are still unsure of the conference structure and season format. But it appears a major change may be in place.
Months ago, Chicago Public Schools’ sports administration office sent schools a new league structure. The Red Division technically has increased from 20 to 24 teams, but instead of a geographical division between two Red conferences, they appear to be separated by the perceived quality of the teams.
The top conference is the Red Shield: Clark, Curie, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Lane, Lincoln Park, Lindblom, Phillips, Simeon, Taft, Westinghouse and Young.
The Red Star conference includes Ag. Science, Bogan, Carver, Crane, Dyett, Englewood, Farragut, Northside, North Lawndale, Payton, Perspectives-Leadership and Marshall.
The eight White and Blue conferences remain geographically divided into Central, North, South and West.
All teams have worked out their schedules using this new alignment and are set to play the other members of their conference once. But CPS has declined to confirm the alignment to the Sun-Times on multiple occasions.
The setup was created under David Rosengard, who was fired as head of CPS sports in early September. CPS also switched out the head of boys basketball around that time, with Laquandis Riley replacing Tony McCoy.
“With Rosengard out and the changeover, I don’t know that anything is certain,” Lane basketball coach Nick LoGalbo said. “We’re about to post our schedule, and we’re going [with the new alignment]. I don’t understand the promotion and relegation at this point. I’ve heard rumors about a two- to three-year window instead of every year. But I don’t know anything for sure.”
There’s also uncertainty around the city tournament format.
“I’ve heard about the top four teams getting byes and it maybe being a 16-team tournament now,” Curie coach Mike Oliver said. “But I don’t think anyone knows for sure.”
Reaction to the new conferences has been mixed. A majority of coaches the Sun-Times spoke with said they were against the change.
“I’m not a big fan of it because of the travel,” Oliver said. “And I don’t think the playoffs are as exciting if we are just playing the same teams over and over. We will play them in conference, in the city playoffs and in the state tournament.”
Young coach Tyrone Slaughter isn’t worried about the travel issue and likes the change overall.
“The travel argument is akin to the shot clock argument,” Slaughter said. “Any time there is the slightest degree of inconvenience, it becomes a problem. It’s not that dramatically different. There are longer distances, but you see teams travel 40 miles for games in the state playoffs. The world does not come to an end. It’s a pain worth tolerating for the excitement and quality of basketball in the conference.”
The Public League’s promotion and relegation system, which worked well with geographic conferences, hasn’t been as effective in the superconference era. Some coaches have major concerns about the rumored two- or three-year conference freeze.
“It’s upsetting,” Julian coach Steve Parham said. “I’ve been working for five years to put together a team to move up to the Red. We moved up from the Blue to the White this year, and now we would be stuck. That hurts. And the Red Division teams are going to poach all of our kids because they are guaranteed to be up there for two years and we can’t move.”