WPIAL reveals new consolation brackets for basketball, includes 3rd-place games

By: Chris Harlan
Tuesday, February 21, 2023 | 12:52 PM

The last time WPIAL basketball had a consolation bracket, the league used a combination of play-in games and follow-the-winner tiebreakers to qualify teams for the 2016 state tournament.

This winter, the consolation brackets are back and more elaborate than last time. Now, all state playoff seeds will be decided on the court, not via tiebreakers.

“We wanted consistency,” WPIAL administrator Vince Sortino said Tuesday, after revealing the new consolation brackets.

“Our main purpose of going back to revisit this whole idea was so teams could decide it on the floor,” he added. “Who’s traveling where (in the state playoffs)? Who’s staying home? That was the purpose.”

As a result, all 12 brackets this winter will have a third-place game, which wasn’t the case when the WPIAL used play-in games seven years ago. Most classifications this winter also will have games to decide fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth place.

The consolation brackets add 49 games to the WPIAL schedule this winter.

“It’s a tournament in itself,” Sortino said.

Teams that reach at least the WPIAL quarterfinals will be eligible for the consolation brackets in Class 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A and A. In Class 6A, teams must reach the semifinals.

The first round of consolation games will be played on the home court of the higher-seeded team, if that school’s gym meets WPIAL requirements to host.

The WPIAL briefly used consolation games in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 seasons with much approval, but the league abandoned them once the sport expanded to six classifications the following winter.

In the past six seasons, the WPIAL used the follow-the-winner system for determining state playoff qualifiers. That system rewarded teams that lost to the eventual WPIAL champion or runner-up.

Now, who you lose to doesn’t matter.

All teams losing in the quarterfinals of Classes 5A, 4A, 3A, 2A and A will enter the consolation bracket with a chance to qualify for states. In Class 6A, teams must reach the semifinal round to qualify for the play-in games.

The number of state qualifiers varies by classification.

In Class 5A boys for example, seven WPIAL teams qualify for states. Therefore, the four teams that lose in the quarterfinals will compete on the court for seeds 5, 6 and 7.

The four teams that advanced to the semifinals will automatically qualify for states as the WPIAL’s top four seeds. The two teams that lose in the semifinals will meet in a third-place game.

The number of state qualifiers is determined by the number of WPIAL teams competing in each classification.

In the boys brackets, Class 6A has three state qualifiers, Class 5A, 4A, 3A and 2A have seven apiece and Class A has five. On the girls side, Class 6A has four, Class 5A and 3A have seven, Class 4A has six, Class 2A has eight and Class A has five.

For now, the WPIAL has only committed to using consolation brackets for this year and will decide after the season whether to continue with them, Sortino said.

WPIAL boys basketball consolation brackets

WPIAL girls basketball consolation brackets

Chris Harlan is a TribLive reporter covering sports. He joined the Trib in 2009 after seven years as a reporter at the Beaver County Times. He can be reached at charlan@triblive.com.