Since March 11, when Lawrence County punched its ticket to Rupp Arena for this week’s Boys’ Sweet 16 by upsetting Martin County 97-84 in the 15th Region finals, euphoria has reigned in the Eastern Kentucky county of some 15,798.

“It feels like everybody in this whole county knows me,” says junior guard Gunnar Woods. “It’s been crazy.”

The Bulldogs’ boys hoops regional championship is only the second in school history. Since the region title was won, “I actually like going to school now,” jokes junior guard Kaiden Harris.

What makes Lawrence County’s trip to Lexington to face 10th Region champion Montgomery County on Thursday at 1:30 p.m. EDT even sweeter is that the Bulldogs’ path to the state tourney came via an unorthodox route.

On Feb. 28, Lawrence County was upset by Prestonsburg 70-69 in the 58th District semifinals. Had the Bulldogs been in any of Kentucky’s other 15 regions, it would have been time to rack up the basketballs until next year.

However, because of an experimental tournament format in use for the second year in the 15th Region, the Sweet 16 dreams of coach Chandler Thompson’s Bulldogs were not dead.

“That’s what makes this a great story,” says Thompson. “It’s a road no other team has ever traveled.”

A unique tourney format

In Kentucky’s “one state, one champion” basketball postseason tournament format, teams that lose in the semifinals or earlier of district tournament play have traditionally been eliminated from championship contention.

Conversely, in the current tourney format in use in the 15th Region , all 14 teams that comprise the region that is centered in the Eastern Kentucky mountains advance to the region tournament.

To understand why the Kentucky High School Athletic Association signed off on the irregular tournament format, you start with the impacts that school consolidation and population decline have had on the number of high schools fielding basketball teams within the 15th Region’s geographic footprint.

According to the “Kentucky High School Basketball Encyclopedia,” there were a whopping 32 boys basketball teams in the 15th Region in 1960. That number was down to 20 teams by 1980. When the 21st century kicked off in 2000, there were 17 teams still competing for the 15th Region crown.

By 2020, that number had dropped to 15.

Now, there are 14 teams in the 15th Region — not enough to fill four, four-team districts.

“Everything in the KHSAA (basketball tournament framework) is kind of predicated on fours,” says Noel Crum, assistant superintendent of Johnson County Public Schools and the 15th Region policy board chair . “There’s 64 districts (in the state). There’s 16 regions. Four districts per region. And you are supposed to have at least four teams a district.”

With the current shortage of schools in the 15th Region, there are two four-team districts and two three-team districts. That reality, Crum says, created competitive inequity because the teams in the four-team districts and those in the three-team districts did not have equivalent routes to advance to the region tourney.

In the four-team districts, if you lost your first district tourney game you were out. Conversely, there were scenarios in the three-team districts, Crum says, where a team that lost its first tourney game could advance to the region anyway.

Says Crum: “We started looking for a way to make things equitable for all schools in the region.”

The result, which has now been used by the 15th Region the past two seasons, is the “super-regional.”

It works like this:

The four champions of districts 57, 58, 59 and 60 advance into the 15th Region quarterfinals as they have traditionally done.

The six teams in the 15th Region that lose the first games of their district tournaments are not eliminated.

Of those six, the four teams that were “three seeds” in their district have a draw. Two will draw byes. Two will draw games against the two “four seeds” from the district tournaments.

The two district tourney losers who drew byes and the two winners of the three vs. four games advance to play against the four district tournament runners-up for the right to advance to the region quarterfinals.

Winners of those games will face the district champions in the region quarterfinals — and the rest of the 15th Region tourney moves forward from there in the conventional manner.

KHSAA commissioner Julian Tackett says the schools that comprise the 15th Region deserve praise for being willing to try something different in response to their local circumstances.

“Trying a different format is never bad,” Tackett says. “It’s good to see (the 15th Region) try to experiment.”

Simply re-balancing all the regions in the state to ensure at least 16 teams in each is unrealistic, Tackett says, because of geographic considerations.

“Our state is still seven-plus hours across,” he said. “At some point, it’s too much travel to start trying to move people around.”

Given that district tournament runners-up have traditionally advanced to regional tournaments in Kentucky and often reach the state tourney, it’s not that jarring to see a loser of a district semifinal make the Sweet 16.

Still, when a state championship is at stake, it seems less than ideal to not have a uniform tournament format across all regions.

“You would like to have everything identical,” Tackett said. “But I doubt, when you look at the collegiate model, that the power four conferences are identical to the next level down. There are some differences that are always going to be there.”

Because of school consolidations and declining populations in other parts of Kentucky, Tackett says there may be regions other than the 15th that will soon have to adopt some version of a super-regional format.

Redeeming a second chance

Instead of turning in their uniforms after their district tournament semifinals loss to Prestonsburg, the Lawrence County players held a team meeting.

“Most genuine, true team meeting I have ever been a part of,” says Thompson, the Lawrence County coach. “The kids spoke their heart and got some things off their chest.”

An offensively adept team that will come to Rupp Arena averaging 77.7 points a game, the Bulldogs used that team meeting to confront a hard reality about their path forward: As Pat Riley would have put it, with no rebounds, there would be no rings.

“We knew we had to rebound better,” says sophomore guard Hayden Perry.

Lawrence County traveled an arduous route through their region tourney. The Bulldogs beat the region’s fifth-ranked team, Johnson Central, in the play-in game.

Lawrence County proceeded to beat second-ranked Pikeville in the 15th Region quarterfinals, fourth-ranked Pike County Central in the semifinals and third-ranked Martin County in the finals.

That’s how a team that starts no seniors and features three players — Harris (18.8), Woods (18.7) and Perry (15.7) — averaging more than 15 points a game, turned their unconventional “second chance” into their school’s first boys state tournament trip since 2016.

Rest assured, whatever controversy there may be around the 15th Region’s “super-regional” format anywhere else in the commonwealth, they are feeling pretty good about it in Lawrence County.

“If it wasn’t for that, we’d be sitting at home right now,” says Bulldogs senior forward Kasen Staniford. “So I think everybody on the Lawrence County side is a HUGE fan of it.”

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