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The high school basketball state playoffs have undergone some major shifts since the COVID-19 pandemic led to the PIAA cancelling the 2020 tournament during the quarterfinal round.
In 2021, only district champions made brackets that required most teams to only win three games instead of five to win a state title. That year also introduced teams on the upper part of the bracket getting the chance to host state playoff games.
A year ago, the bracket went back to 32 teams and needing to win five games to win a title, but potential home games remained and instead of a week off following the end of the window for district playoffs, some teams got only a few days as the PIAA playoffs started on Tuesday and Wednesday.
For this year, the PIAA is allowing home games again, but only for the first round. In addition to sticking with the 32-team field for all six brackets (minus the Class 1A girls which only had 31 enter), the tournament is back to starting on Friday and Saturday, giving teams and coaches plenty of time to prepare for one opponent.
With the stark contrast to the regular-season schedule where a team may be playing four games in a week, coaches adapt.
"It's completely different," Bishop Guilfoyle Catholic boys coach Chris Drenning said. "You spend the first couple days working on yourself hopefully. Later in the week, closer to the game, you work on things you want to try and take away that your opponent does best, but you have so much more time and it allows you to get some rest."
Unlike the grind of the regular season.
"During the season, you are frequently playing three games in five days," Drenning said. "The day in between, you're just doing walkthroughs, some film and maybe some shooting. You're trying to save your legs for the next night."
Drenning led his Marauders to the PIAA Class 2A championship game in 2019, the 2A quarterfinals in 2020, the 3A semifinals in 2021 and the 3A quarterfinals last year. In all, he's won seven PIAA games in the last four years.
"You can't stray too far from what you do well," Drenning said. "It sounds like a cliche, but you have to play to your strengths. Everybody is good now, and I mean everybody. Everyone has good players and things they do well. We just try to concentrate on taking away things that the other team wants to do and what we look at as their strengths."
Drenning's team will be playing Loyalsock Township in a doubleheader with the Lady Marauders, who will be hosting Bishop Canevin out of the WPIAL at 6 p.m. on Saturday.
"Obviously (the extra time) gives us a lot more time to watch film and to scout and prepare that way," Bishop Guilfoyle girls coach Kristi Kaack said. "When you are playing teams in your conference, you are familiar with them, but when you are playing teams you aren't familiar with, it's nice to have that extra time to prepare."
Kaack led the Lady Marauders to a state title in 2021 when they had to travel to Coudersport and Rochester to play true road games in the state playoffs.
Both BG teams will be on the other side of that experience this year.
"Everybody wants to play at home," Drenning said. "I just think it's a big advantage. You are used to the gym and the background, and you don't have to travel. Especially when one team is traveling and the other team isn't, I just think that makes it tougher. The familiarity at this point of the season is a big asset."
One area team, Northern Bedford, will be doing the opposite when it travels to Elk County Catholic, more than 110 miles away, for a 1A girls game on Saturday.
"We know we have a long trip, and obviously they have the homecourt advantage," Northern Bedford girls coach Jon Ewart said. "That's the nice thing about being the top seed in the bracket since COVID-19 happened. It's going to be a different atmosphere. They will have a lot of fans there with it being their home floor, so we're trying to prepare to deal with some adversity we'll probably have to face."
Another coach that has already dealt with playing against homecourt advantage, Hollidaysburg's Deanna Jubeck, is happy to have it in her corner this year when the Lady Tigers open at home against Lower Dauphin at 5 p.m. on Saturday.
"I think it's huge," Jubeck said. "We really put it as one of our main talking points at the beginning of the year to get through districts and get that home game. Not only for one last home game for the seniors, but to get community support right back in your gym, hopefully for a first-round victory.
"It's extremely tough (being on the other side). One year, we went to Farrell High School, which was right on the border of Ohio, and the following year, we had to go to Spring Grove. When you are getting on a bus and putting those kids on a Fullington and traveling two or three hours, it's tough to get them off the bus and be ready to play right away and get into it. You really see that first quarter really stall a little bit with a group of high school kids coming off a long trip."
Altoona's girls basketball team opens on Friday by hosting Mount Lebanon at 6 p.m., a rematch from earlier in the season when the Lady Lions lost by 10 in the third of four games that week.
"It's really different (having the extra time)," Altoona girls basketball coach Chris Fleegle said. "It's balancing act though with five days to prepare. You want to keep the kids' attention span at an all-time high. We have to worry about us and our opponent at the same time. It gives us a chance to break down film, watch and see what they like to do and their tendencies and go over it in practice, but at the same time you don't want to overwhelm the kids."
Some schools, like Portage -- which hosts Cameron County on Friday -- are dealing with even more potential issues that could overwhelm its players.
"The other thing people don't realize," Portage boys coach Travis Kargo said. "At smaller schools our size, kids are multi-sport athletes. A lot of our kids are going to baseball after school before basketball practice even though they aren't there the entire practice, we have a lot of players going to get an hour of work in for their spring sport before ours."
At Penn Cambria, which will take on Yough in a 3A boys game at Mount Aloysius as the second game of a doubleheader with the PC girls, who take on Highlands in a 4A game at 3:30 p.m., has the extra challenge of not just players playing both basketball and baseball but its coach, Jim Ronan, being the head coach of both sports.
Practice for spring sports began on Monday.
"Even during football, I don't want my kids looking at basketball season," Ronan said. "Once I'm in basketball, even though I'm associated with baseball, it's full hands-on deck with hoops and nothing else. My players are strictly focusing on the next task at hand which is Saturday.
"I have a couple assistants that are taking the reins for the next week and a half, hopefully the next two and a half weeks," Ronan continued. "They do a great job with it. My entire basketball team is my entire starting baseball team. It's crazy. I have never seen another group where the entire starting football group is basketball, the entire basketball group is baseball. The core, I'm talking 10-12 guys on my basketball team will be the guys playing baseball."
Some coaches place value on staying sharp during the lull.
"We try and look at the week as a whole and try and split it up," Kargo said. "At this time of the year, when you have a week off, we like to get a scrimmage with another team in. We did a scrimmage Sunday and a scrimmage (Tuesday) to break it up."
Others use it as a chance to get healthy.
"It changes a lot, because it allows us to get some rest days," Williamsburg girls basketball coach Amy Hileman said. "At the end of the season, you might have a lingering injury or something sore on you. It is nice to give them a couple rest days, and it is nice to watch a ton of film on who you are going to see and break it down into drills that you are trying to reproduce what the girls are going to see."
Most coaches agreed that it's more important to stick to being the team that got you to the PIAA tournament rather than trying to use the week to change who you are because of your opponent.
"We're not going to put in any new wrinkles offensively for the most part," Ronan said. "We're going to do what we do best. Defensively, we'll make a few tweaks, but it's going to be what we have been doing. I feel we need to be just as physically and mentally sharp as we can."
That doesn't mean not picking up on some things that haven't been working or making needed improvements.
"It almost goes back to a preseason type of thing where you are working on skill development and cleaning up some of the things you think you can do better regardless of the opponent," Drenning said.
Though many teams lean on their coaching staff to do the majority of film work throughout the season, the extra time allows for more of a chance to go over it in detail with players and explain what they might expect.
"We try and watch it as coaches for every game," Kargo said. "When we have that extra time, not only will we watch it as coaches, but we'll watch it with the team. We make video reels that we send to our players of the opposing teams."
The availability of video on teams has also increased.
"At this stage of the game, it's about keeping focus and looking at just one game at a time," Jubeck said. "Having the long layoff between the district championship and the first state playoff game, we're able to break down film and know exactly the tendencies that we are about to see in the first round.
"I think with the way film exchange works these days, if you see and can forecast what's next, you're able to get some of those films in advance and really get a preview of what's coming ahead."
At the end of the day, most coaches feel the outcome truly comes down to the players in the game more than their own preparation.
"You put a lot of trust in your players," Kaack said. "You can give them a lot of information, but we trust that they are going to show up and do the work. That's the most important thing at this time of the year.''