Basketball is moving to a different playoff format this year, using a system that - much like the one football uses - includes automatic spots, seeding priority based on overall winning percentage and the use of pods based on each school's geographical position from east to west.

And while the football model - which includes eight 32-team brackets - has been the source of much scrutiny, Triangle soccer and volleyball coaches have been wanting something like this for years.

Soccer and volleyball - as well as baseball and softball - still use a slot system for their 64-team brackets. Each spot in the field is predetermined, and the N.C. High School Athletic Association tries to come up with combinations that are fair while not creating travel problems for the whole.

But that sometimes allows some of the state's top teams to meet early in the playoffs.

Take the Green Hope boys' soccer team from this past fall. The Falcons' easiest game (after the first round) was the East final against Pinecrest. The Falcons already had run through a gauntlet of top Triangle-area schools in the previous rounds, just because of the position of the slots.

Four second-round games during this year's 4A boys soccer playoffs featured one top-15 team going against another. Some of the top teams in the state were done early, basically because of the playoff format.

Volleyball has experienced similar results with the slot system. Green Hope, Apex and Riverside spent most of last season ranked in the state's top 10, even top five. Yet only one of them was going to make it out of the third round, since all three were placed so close together in the bracket.

I played around a little bit with this new basketball format and posted what the East and Mideast 1-16 seeds would have looked like in the 2011 boys' soccer and volleyball playoffs.

You can see my full work at http://blogs.newsobserver.com/swakesports/if-soccer-volleyball-had-used-new-pod-system

There was really only one thing I wanted to find out - would it improve the competitive balance without hurting first-round travel?

It was easy to see how the competitive part was helped. Teams that do well in the nonconference but play in tough conferences almost always are rewarded with high seeds.

Based on what transpired this season and in the postseason, the likely East finals would have been Sanderson at Green Hope for boys' soccer and Wilmington Hoggard at Green Hope for volleyball.

Hoggard and Green Hope met for the 4A East title anyway, but that game was in Wilmington because of the NCHSAA's "conference seeding priority," which randomly assigns a pecking order should two teams of equal seeds meet in the postseason.

Hoggard, which had a lower winning percentage than Green Hope, proved to be the better team that day, winning 3-2. But would Green Hope's home crowd sway a 3-2 Hoggard win to a 3-2 Green Hope victory?

Who knows.

Another byproduct of using this format: the Mid-South and Cap-8 Conferences essentially swap spots from what's been the most common slot system brackets. Apparently, Fayetteville-area schools are more westward than Raleigh-area schools.

Because the Cap-8 and Tri-Nine are powerhouses in most sports, shifting one seems to balance the brackets better than in the past.

I also found this method cuts down on travel for a lot of teams, but not all teams are favorably affected.

One match-up sends the Hoke County volleyball team to Person - a road trip from the southern border to the northern. There are also seven first-round intra-conference games in boys soccer and six in volleyball.

I guess there's no way to avoid these unless you use the slot system.

But coaches have already said they'd rather not use the slot. They've hoped for a system much like basketball's.

If the basketball changes are well-received after this year, maybe those volleyball and soccer coaches will get their wish in time for next fall.