Sweet Sixteen (KHSAA State Basketball Championship)
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association boys' and girls' state basketball championships are single elimination tournaments held each March featuring 16 high schools. Colloquially known as the Sweet Sixteen (the KHSAA holds a trademark on the phrase), the tournament takes place over 4 days at Lexington's Rupp Arena for the boys until 2014 and Bowling Green's E. A. Diddle Arena on the campus of Western Kentucky University for the girls until 2011. The state tournaments begin with District tournaments (usually with four, but sometimes with three or five teams) at sites across the state, district winners and runners-up advance to sixteen regional tournaments (usually eight teams each) with the Regional Champions advancing to the Sweet Sixteen. Seeding for the Sweet Sixteen is determined by a blind draw, broadcast on statewide television.
Since its 1918 inception the Sweet Sixteen has built a legacy that includes dynasty teams and dramatic underdog stories. The tournament is particularly noteworthy in that it is only one of three state tournaments (Hawaii and Delaware are the others) without a class system dividing small schools and larger schools into separate championships. The possibility of a small rural Kentucky school defeating a large consolidated school or schools from Lexington or Louisville for the state championship are a large part of the statewide appeal for the tournament. Such Hoosiers-like stories are not uncommon for the tournament such as in 1995, 1996, and 2010 when Breckinridge County, Paintsville and Shelby Valley (located in Pikeville) defeated much larger schools to win the boys' state championship. Also in 1994 M.C. Napier High School (located near Hazard), (it would be consolidated into Perry County Central High School), claimed the girls title. They would play one more season in 1995 before consolidation. In the boys 2010 Championship game, Shelby Valley with an enrollment of under 600 students defeated Louisville Ballard the twelfth largest high school in Kentucky.
Another emotional story came in the 1981 boys' tournament, when Simon Kenton High School of Independence, whose students were forced into involuntary exile after a series of natural gas explosions in October 1980 destroyed much of the school, won the state title. However, the greatest finish in Boys Sweet Sixteen history came in the 1982 State Championship game between Laurel County and North Hardin led by high school All-American Robbie Valentine. With the game tied and one second remaining, Laurel County's Paul Andrews hit a desperation 50-foot shot to win the game 53-51.
The unique nature of the tournament and NBA-style pre-game and post-game ceremonies and celebrations at the finals draw fans throughout the state to both tournaments. Crowds for the boys' tournament usually total around 120,000 fans during the week and the finals typically draw 15-20,000 spectators.
Read more about Sweet Sixteen (KHSAA State Basketball Championship): 2013 Houchens Industries KHSAA Girls Sweet Sixteen, 2013 PNC Bank KHSAA Boys Sweet Sixteen, KHSAA Boys Sweet Sixteen State Champions, KHSAA Girls Sweet Sixteen State Champions, Schools With At Least Three Boys State Championships, Schools With At Least Two Girls State Championships
Famous quotes containing the words sweet, sixteen, state and/or basketball:
“O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!
Keep me in temper. I would not be mad.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Perhaps having built a barricade when you’re sixteen provides you with a sort of safety rail. If you’ve once taken part in building one, even inadvertently, doesn’t its usually latent image reappear like a warning signal whenever you’re tempted to join the police, or support any manifestation of Law and Order?”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“The educated do not share a common body of information, but a common state of mind.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)