After the opening round was postponed for a second straight day because of snow and ice throughout the region, changes were made Tuesday to the format of the Class 1A Northwest District basketball tournaments.
The new format for the eight-team boys and girls tournaments — which include five teams from the North Sound Conference and three from the Northwest Conference — features fewer total games and different opening-round matchups than the original double-elimination format, which was scheduled to begin Monday.
Under the new format, the top two seeds from each conference square off Wednesday in a pair of district semifinal games. The semifinal winners advance to Saturday’s district championship and clinch 1A Northwest/Sea-King Bi-District Tournament berths.
Meanwhile, the other four teams in the district tournament will square off in a pair of loser-out games Wednesday. The winners of those contests then face the semifinal losers in two more elimination games, which take place Thursday in the boys tournament and Friday in the girls tournament.
The winners of those Thursday/Friday loser-out contests then meet in Saturday’s district third/fourth-place game, with both teams advancing to the bi-district tournament.
