NMAA admits error in seeding schools in girls Class 4A bracket; new matchups abound

Ten of the 16 girls basketball teams in the Class 4A state bracket are going to be playing someone in the first round other than the opponent first announced by the New Mexico Activities Association on Sunday.

The NMAA on Tuesday morning said that it had made a mistake in seeding five teams (seeds 11-15) in the 4A division. So now five of the eight first-round matchups coming up on Friday look different than when the NMAA unveiled the bracket.

The 11 through 15 seeds as revealed Sunday were Española Valley at 11, Pojoaque Valley at 12, Shiprock at 13, St. Pius at 14 and Grants at No. 15.

All five of those schools were assigned new seeds Tuesday morning following a review by the NMAA.

It is now Shiprock at 11, St. Pius 12, Grants 13, Española Valley 14 and Pojoaque Valley — a 20-win team — at No. 15.

“Its just crazy,” said Bernalillo girls coach Ashley Darnell-Duran, whose team was impacted by the change.

The dominos began to tumble when someone — NMAA executive director Dusty Young declined to identify the school when asked directly about this — on Tuesday morning contacted his organization’s office and pointed out a discrepancy in the 4A bracket.

“Basically, Española Valley was given an 11 seed and they shouldn’t have,” Young said.

The NMAA said the “comparison process” between St. Pius, Española Valley and Shiprock led to the five schools, including Grants and Pojoaque Valley, being wrongly seeded.

“Just an error by the seeding committee,” Young conceded.

Thus, the 10 schools with new opponents were forced to toss all the scouting, travel and logistics work they already had done, and start anew.

“For me, I think my only frustration is they waited 48 hours to fix it,” St. Pius coach Brio Rode said, adding, “It doesn’t bother me, I have to get my team to listen and perform.”

Gallup, Albuquerque Academy, Hope Christian, Valencia and Bernalillo are the 2 through 6 seeds, and most of them had to gather recon on a new opponent after spending the previous two days practicing for someone else.

St. Pius and Valencia were impacted the least, since they are district rivals and played each other multiple times during the season. The rest mostly had to start from scratch.

“It’s not what you want to see happen,” Gallup coach Todd McBroom said. “It’s hard to see that change.”

His Bengals were to play rival Grants; now it’ll be Pojoaque Valley, a team ranked No. 8 in 4A in the final MaxPreps computer poll but now saddled with a 15 seed. Española Valley, which won that district by virtue of two 35-33 regular-season wins over the Elkettes, are, by comparison, ranked 17th in the computer poll.

No double-digit seed was impacted even close to the way Pojoaque was after Tuesday’s change. The Elkettes were scheduled to play at No. 5 seed Valencia for a reasonable shot to reach the Pit next Tuesday in Week 2, but now they face a ridiculously more demanding assignment and considerably longer odds.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow,” Pojoaque Valley coach Bobby Romero said.

“I’m not trying to be negative,” Romero said. “If this had happened on Sunday I’d be totally fine with it. But that happened Tuesday morning. It’s a lot of adversity we’ll have to deal with.”

Romero wondered if Pojoaque was the first 20-8 team that’s ever been a 15 seed.

Multiple coaches the Journal spoke with Tuesday took umbrage with at least one of the six criteria points the NMAA uses to select and seed teams. Romero did not like the criteria point that says his team had to be seeded behind Española Valley because EV won the regular season in their district.

Rode and McBroom both voiced their opinion about the validity of the coaches’ voting sheets, which is another criterion. Both coaches said the NMAA must make a change to proactively publicize the coaches’ voting results so everyone (schools and the public alike) has insight into that part of how teams are seeded. This is a feeling shared by many coaches across every sport in New Mexico.

“If we’re gonna have a poll,” Rode said, “it should be public.”

Said McBroom, “That’s where it’s not transparent in my eyes.”

James Yodice covers prep sports for the Journal. You can reach him at jyodice@abqjournal.com or via X at @JamesDYodice.