Scroll down to head South Hunterdon Athletic Director Jason Miller – head of the Skyland Conference boys’ seeding committee – talk about this year’s Skyland Conference postseason format.
For many years, the Skyland Conference has played its basketball season, then broken up into two camps: Somerset County, and all the rest.
Somerset County holds its basketball tournament, with each round being played on a Saturday while the regular season continues during the week. The Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex Tournament does the same.
Compared to the Greater Middlesex Conference, they’re a pair of awkward, fumbling events, with no real continuity. Lose in the quarterfinals, and you still have a couple weeks of the regular season to play out. Lose in the GMCs and you have to stew for a week until the state tournament, maybe picking up a game with a team that got knocked out of another league event.
This year, however – just like everything else – will be different.
All 47 teams in the Skyland Conference – 24 on the girls’ side, 23 on the boys – will be in one tournament, with the girls and boys each being broken into three pods, to play off to champions.
The girls will feature three-eight team pods, with the top eight teams in the league in one, the middle three teams in the second, and the bottom three teams in the third. The boys – since all-girls Mount St. Mary doesn’t have a team – will have seven teams in its top pod, and eight in the other two.
There’s no segregation between Somerset and all the rest; everyone’s together.
Last season, Rutgers Prep’s boys and girls swept the Somerset County Tournament. In the Hunterdon/Warren/Sussex Tournament, Hunterdon Central won the boys side, while Sparta won the girls’ tournament.
Click below to listen to South Hunterdon Athletic Director Jason Miller talk about the 2021 Skyland Conference postseason: