WPIAL committees to determine basketball, wrestling matchups Tuesday

By: HSSN Staff
Monday, February 11, 2019 | 6:24 PM

If the WPIAL football playoff brackets unveil is like Christmas for high school fans, then the basketball tournament release is like Easter.

Coaches, players, fans and the media’s thoughts and guesses to what the district basketball brackets will look like will become reality Tuesday evening.

The WPIAL will gather coaches and athletic directors from playoff-bound schools Tuesday evening in Green Tree to unveil the 2019 boys and girls postseason brackets.

Fans and players can find out the matchups by watching the WPIAL Basketball Playoff Pairings Show at 7 p.m. Tuesday on the TribLive High School Sports Network.

Here is the setup for the 12 playoff brackets:

Boys 6A: 12-team bracket with the top four seeds getting first-round byes

Boys 5A: 13-team bracket with the top three seeds getting first-round byes

Boys 4A: 13-team bracket with the top three seeds getting first-round byes

Boys 3A: 16-team bracket with the no byes and no preliminary-round games

Boys 2A: 12-team bracket with the top four seeds getting first-round byes

Boys A: 12-team bracket with the top four seeds getting first-round byes

Girls 6A: 8-team bracket which begins in the quarterfinal round

Girls 5A: 12-team bracket with the top 4 seeds getting first-round byes

Girls 4A: 13-team bracket with the top 3 seeds getting first-round byes

Girls 3A: 13-team bracket with the top 3 seeds getting first-round byes

Girls 2A: 14-team bracket with the top 2 seeds getting first-round byes

Girls A: 12-team bracket with the top 4 seeds getting first-round byes

Shooting for gold

The district will be handing out gold Tuesday following the 2019 WPIAL team rifle championships at the Dormont-Mt.Lebanon Sportsmen’s Club in Canonsburg.

Participating teams will send 10 shooters to compete with the top eight scores being added up to determine the winner.

Hempfield edged Woodland Hills and Butler a year ago to win the district title.

In fact, as the WPIAL holds the final team rifle championship this decade, it has been a nine-year span where only three schools have earned their spot in the winner’s circle.

In this decade, Woodland Hills has won four WPIAL golden guns, Hempfield three and Trinity two.

The individual championships are set for Thursday.

More bracketology

The WPIAL basketball brackets aren’t the only ones being put together on Tuesday.

The district wrestling steering committee will meet to put together the brackets for the WPIAL Class AA sectionals on Friday.

The individual sectionals will take place Friday at Canon-McMillan starting at 3 p.m.

The top four wrestlers from each weight class advance to the WPIAL individual wrestling championships which will begin with opening-round bouts on Friday night and continue all day Saturday with the championship finals set for 5 p.m.

Listen to coverage of both the Class AA sectionals and championships at TribHSSN.TribLive.com.

Don Rebel is a Tribune-Review staff writer. You can contact Don at drebel@tribweb.com or via Twitter @TheDonRebel.

Tags: Canon-McMillan, Hempfield, Trinity, Woodland Hills