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Originally Posted by Nevadaref
This contest between River Rouge and Unity Christian was shown as a full replay on FoxSports in my area. I had heard that it was a close game, so decided to watch it.
7. Someone from Michigan will have to chime in and explain the location and nature of the schools. (Inner city, private, public, enrollment, etc.) How are the divisions determined? It was fascinating watching these two teams battle.
8. The racial make-up also provided a striking contrast with RR all-Black and UC all-White. Are there many such situations of this in Michigan? Don’t know what undercurrents this brought to the game, but nothing was apparent on the court. For the record the 3-man officiating crew had one Black guy and two White guys.
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In regards to the schools and their locations. River Rouge is a public school on the border of Detroit. This school is a traditional basketball powerhouse and has a substantial student population that school of choice transfers to RR from the City of Detroit. Unity Christian is a private school located in Hudsonville, which is the suburban/rural area between Grand Rapids and Holland on the west side of the state.
The divisions in Michigan are created by school enrollment. The MHSAA takes the enrollment of all schools in the state offering the sport and divides by 4. The largest schools are D1, next largest are D2 and so on. This was the first year basketball went to divisions, after previously classifying schools as Class A, B, C, or D for basketball. The prior system had a school classified into a Class based on enrollment with no regard to the school offering the sport. The new system only classifies teams offering the sport. This creates some slight variation from the old system to the new system. Public and Private schools are classified together. A couple adjustments can be made to a schools enrollment. A school that is all one gender (like the larger Catholic Schools in the Detroit area) are classified based on double their enrollment. This is to make it fair comparing them with co-ed schools. Also if a school has a population of students that is more than 75% one gender, the schools can be classified differently. I don't know of any schools falling into this category. There used to be a school that was for people entering fields such as clothing design and similar largely female occupational roles. This school was classified under that system, but I think it diversified into a number of other fields and changed names as well.
As for the make-up of the teams. We do have a lot of communities which are largely segregated where the number of minorities is small. The closer you are to the major population centers the more diverse the schools are. The Detroit area schools tend to have a very high number of minorities and Caucasian's a definite minority in those schools.
For some schools there are a lot of games featuring racially diverse members. Some of the Detroit teams may rarely play a team with Caucasian players, while many other teams will seek out the best opponents they can find to play.
River Rouge is one of those teams that will play anyone without considering the opponent. This comes from a coach who isn't afraid to play a quality schedule. They actually beat the D1 state champions by 31 points early in the season. The majority of their opponents were from diverse communities because those schools 1) tend to be better basketball schools for the most part in Michigan, and 2) fit into the schedule afforded the schools based on conference schedules.
River Rouge and UC had one opponent in common. Both schools played Benton Harbor who entered the tourney ranked #1. BH beat RR by 10. UC knocked the #1 ranked BH Tiger's out of the tourney.
A lot of the highly ranked teams in Michigan have no problem playing other highly ranked teams. This is opposite of football. Since everyone gets into the basketball tourney, your team helps itself by playing a tough schedule. In football 6 wins gets you into the playoffs, so you want to avoid playing tough opponents. This is why RR struggles to fill their football schedule, nobody wants to play them.