2002 NSC
| 2002 PACE NSC | |
|---|---|
| Edited by | Matt Weiner |
| Champion | Richard Montgomery |
| Runner-up | Detroit Catholic Central |
| Third | Eleanor Roosevelt and Detroit Country Day |
| High scorer | Sean Hou |
| Site | George Washington |
| Field | 40 |
| Stats | |
The 2002 National Scholastic Championship was won by Richard Montgomery, consisting of Jacob Leibenluft, Tyler Allard, Erica Morgan, and Arthur O'Dwyer. The tournament was held at George Washington University.
Tournament results
Richard Montgomery defeated Detroit Catholic Central in the final, 300-290. Richard Montgomery and Detroit Catholic Central defeated Detroit Country Day and Eleanor Roosevelt in the semifinals, respectively.
Originally, the tournament format announced for 2002 was an extremely ambitious system which disregarded traditional prelim pool round-robins and attempted to construct a similar strength-of-schedule for all teams without using pools. This was a response to the unusual tournament size which made division into prelim brackets difficult. In future years of the old PACE NSC tournament format prelim pools of more than 8 teams/7 games were used to address this issue when needed.
The tournament organizers ultimately decided that the proposed format was too complicated and divided teams into pools ranging from 6 to 7 teams in size. Since the 7-team pools required 7 rounds, including one bye per team, to complete, this meant that teams in the 6-team prelim pools played only 5 games across 7 rounds and had two byes. This is the situation that both the originally proposed format and the larger prelim brackets used in future years were intended to avoid.
The top 4 teams from each of the 6 prelim pools made the 24-team championship playoff, which consisted of four pools of six teams each. The winner of each playoff pool advanced to a single-elimination final four. Teams which finished 4-1 in a playoff pool with a 5-0 team could be eliminated from final four contention with one loss.
State College's bid for a fifth straight NSC title was ended when they lost a minimatch tiebreaker following a three-way tie for first in their playoff pool. They did finish the prelims undefeated for the fifth consecutive year, starting with the original PACE NSC in 1998.
An all-in consolation playoff was held among teams outside the top 24 who returned on Sunday.
This tournament featured an exhibition Saturday night trash round in addition to the normal All-Star Game after the finals on Sunday.
Individual results
Full stats may be found at the below link and are currently being reformatted into SQBS reports for posting. The tournament All-Stars were selected by polling participating teams and staff and are listed alphabetically.
The top 8 scorers by prelim PPG were:
- Sean Hou, Fort Mill - 108 ppg
- Scott Francis, Detroit Country Day - 103 ppg
- David Hill, Indian Springs - 100 ppg
- Pat Freeburn , Hartland - 98 ppg
- Wesley Gerald, St. Andrew's - 90 ppg
- Art Vilassakdanont, Maggie Walker A - 88 ppg
- Jacob Liebenluft, Richard Montgomery - 86 ppg
- Jay Hogan, Rickards - 84 ppg
External Links
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