The Iowa High School Athletic Association released the district basketball assignments for the Class 1A and 2A tournaments Monday afternoon. The 3A district and 4A substate assignments will be released next Monday.

Cedar Valley Christian will make its IHSAA debut in Class 1A District 11, which also counts Iowa Mennonite and Lone Tree among its members.

I would like to examine Class 4A. As always, the big question will be "Who goes where?" Some years it is easy to envision what the IHSAA is thinking, some not.

This appears to be one of those "not" years.

Last year the Metro was outstanding, chock full of great teams with great talent. It didn't take a mathematician from MIT to figure out the state was going to try and separate the Metro teams to get the best field possible to the state tournament. This year, the records are not quite as glossy and the question is what will happen, which direction will teams go?

It hasn't happened in a while, but perhaps the Metro is due for a "City Tournament" to qualify a team for Des Moines in March. Speaking for myself and other fans of Metro basketball, I hope they do separate the teams and we get to see as many teams and players as possible in Des Moines.

But what if that doesn't happen?

I have talked with all of the Metro 4A coaches and at least two of them have agreed that this may be the year that the city is thrown together in a basketball free-for-all.

Time would tell us that we are due for this to happen. The last time all of the 4A teams were thrown together was 2001. Back then there were five 4A teams.  Xavier was still a 3A school, along with Marion, and Prairie was beaten by the only non-Metro school in the substate, Waterloo East. If the Metro schools are all thrown together, this time it would be a full six team substate with no outsiders.

Could it happen?

Absolutely. The IHSAA has done a much better job over the past several years of getting the best teams to state and has done the Metro many favors splitting up the top local squads to allow them to advance as far as they can.

This year though, that could change and another region could be allowed to showcase its talents.

(Scott Unash is the sports and program director at KGYM-AM 1600. He is a six-time winner of the Iowa Broadcast News Association play-by-play Announcer of the Year Award. Scott and Mark Dukes co-host the Gym Class weekdays from 3-4 p.m. on KGYM)