Here's how the NCHSAA will determine the playoff brackets this year

By Nick Stevens, HighSchoolOT managing editor

Once again, the N.C. High School Athletic Association will use an RPI formula to determine which teams will make the state playoffs in many sports during the 2022-2023 school year.

Baseball, basketball, football, soccer, softball, and volleyball will all be seeded in 64-team brackets; lacrosse will be seeded in a 40-team bracket; and tennis and wrestling will be seeded in a 32-team bracket.

For volleyball, only matches that are determined by the best-of-five sets will be counted towards the RPI formula.

As a reminder, football playoffs are no longer subdivided. That means there will only be a maximum of four classifications in each sport, including football. For many years, football had eight different sub-classifications.

How do teams qualify for the playoffs?

There will be a number of automatic bids to the playoffs based on the number of teams in a particular conference. Conferences that have 1-5 teams participating in a sport will get one automatic bid, which will go to the conference champion. Conferences with six or more teams participating in a sport will get two automatic bids, one of the conference champion and another to the second place team or the conference tournament champion.

In split conferences with at least two teams from a particular classification, the highest-finishing team from a particular classification will make the playoffs automatically, regardless of where it finishes in the overall conference standings.

The remaining spots in the playoff field will be determined by the RPI ratings of teams that did not automatically qualify for the playoffs — HOWEVER, a team cannot get into the playoffs unless all the teams who finished ahead of them in the conference standings have also done so. In other words: no leapfrogging your way into the postseason, even if your RPI is better than theirs.

What happens when teams in a conference are tied?

The tie-breaking procedure comes into play after a conference tournament is completed or before the NCHSAA seeds the playoffs if a conference tournament is not held. Here are the tie-breaking procedures in order. These procedures must be followed in this order to determine the tie-breaker:

1. Head-to-head competition
2. If the two teams are tied after being eliminated from the conference tournament, or if a conference tournament is not held, a special playoff game can be played. Both teams can mutually agree to forego this step if they agree to break the tie in another fashion. A special playoff game cannot violate the daily or weekly limitations for a particular sport though. A meeting between the two tied teams in a conference tournament would count as the tie-breaker game.
3. If both teams are eliminated from the conference tournament and can play the playoff game without violating the weekly limitations, the game should be played unless a team advances to the conference tournament championship game. In that case, the team that gets to the finals wins the tie-breaker.
4. If three or more teams are tied, the team that advances furthest in the conference tournament will win the tie-breaker.
5. If the tie cannot be broken after step No. 4, all previous head-to-head competition is used to break the tie. This step cannot be used when there are multiple ties though.
6. If there is still a tie, the tie will be broken based on how the teams fared against the rest of the conference, starting with the No. 1 team and moving down the list until the tie is broken.
7. If the tie is still not broken, the RPI ranking will be used to break the tie.
8. On the off chance the two teams have the same RPI, a random draw will be held.

What if teams in the same split conference from different classifications are tied?

If two teams in a split conference are tied but the two teams belong to different classifications, there is no need to break the tie for playoff purposes. Instead, the two teams will receive berths in their respective classifications. If there are multiple ties, this step will be applied and then the tie-breaking procedure will be used for teams tied within the same classification.

Once the playoff qualifiers are determined, how are they seeded?

The seeding process is pretty simple and is based almost entirely on the NCHSAA RPI formula.

First, all conference champions will be seeded before any other qualifying team. The conference champions will be seeded in order of their RPI rating.

After the conference champions are seeded, all other qualifiers are seeded based on their RPI rating with respect to where they finished in their conference (see the above "no leapfrogging" rule)

Each region — East and West — will be seeded independently of each other. Schools are assigned to regions before the playoffs begin.