The very complex and unpredictable formula for seeding in Section 1 has suddenly become a little more difficult to comprehend.

Starting this season — and likely for the first and final time — Section 1 adopted a new wrinkle into the Class A tournament, beginning this winter with the boys and girls basketball playoffs. Here’s the baseline of what you need to know:

• If 23 out of the possible 29 teams in boys basketball — or out of the 27 girls teams — Section 1 will run it’s normal tournament to determine it’s champion.

• If 24 or more teams qualify, the section will split the field in Class A into a Large School bracket and a Small School bracket based on BEDS enrollment numbers.

If 23 teams or less qualify, the brackets can be found here.

So if 24 or teams qualify, what would this all like? Here’s the full breakdown:

The Full Standings

Here is the latest Section 1 Class A overall standings:

How do you Qualify?

To gain entrance into the Section 1 tournament in basketball, a team must accumulate 32 Qualifying Points. Those points are tabulated:

• 4 Points per victory in ALL games (including out of section and out of state contests)
• 1 Bonus Point for every Section 1 opponent with an overall record winning percentage of .500-.749
• 2 Bonus Points for every Section 1 opponent with an overall record of winner percentage .750 or better

Find the full Qualifying Charts for boys basketball here. For the girls basketball Qualify Chart, click here.

Enrollment Rankings

The breakdown of Class A enrollments:

Note: Albertus Magus is in Class A for boys only; Class AA for girls

Once the 24 (or more) teams qualify, they’ll be split evenly based on the rankings above. In the event there is an odd number of schools that qualify (25, 27 or 29), the extra team will go into the bracket OPPOSITE of the No. 1 seed.

Unfortunately, you cannot know for sure who will be in the Large and Small school brackets without knowing which schools qualify on each side.

Example: Let’s say 25 team qualify and Lakeland finishes as the No. 1 overall seed. They’ll be in the Small School by enrollment. Therefore, the Small School bracket will have the 12 lowest enrollment school that qualifies and the Large School bracket will have the 13 largest schools that qualify.

Seeding the Split Tournament fields

Now the fun part: Slotting the teams into the Large and Small school tournament.

Here’s the latest breakdown:

The Projected Brackets

This is the projected bracket if 24 teams qualify. As of Jan. 26, I don’t feel that a 25th team will reach the qualifying standard in either boys or girls. If that changes, I will update the projected brackets.