News item: The state's top-ranked boys' high school basketball team, ranked as such every day this season, will compete in the Class S state tournament next month.

This is loosely akin to the Celtics forgoing the NBA playoffs to compete in the NCAA Tournament.

And it is an issue the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and its boys' basketball committee must see as a correctible error in the future.

Sacred Heart, a Catholic school in Waterbury, is the defending state Class S champion. It chose to remain in Class S this season because the "recent success" mechanism that requires accomplished programs to move up a division didn't apply to the Hearts at the beginning of this season.

The CIAC's standard of "recent success" is defined as making the state quarterfinals twice in a three-year period. Sacred Heart missed the tournament the three previous years before last season's championship.

The Hearts, however, returned several quality players, including state Player of the Year candidate, University of Pittsburgh-bound Mustapha Heron. Common sense normally suggests that a defending champion with high level returnees shouldn't be competing in the state's weakest division.

It's an impossible spot for the rest of Class S, an enclave of, by definition, small schools. Without anyone close to attending an ACC school. We have Exhibit A around here: Old Lyme. Solid team. Very capable of a deep run. And the reward? Potentially play the defending champion, school-of-choice buzzsaw with a terrific player.

The instinctive reaction would be to drill Sacred Heart for its ECC-esque decision. Except that there's a Whoa Nellie here that is the crux of the issue.

Schools to which the "recent success" rule doesn't apply may volunteer to move up under CIAC rules. But only to Class LL. And the line doesn't exactly form to the right with high school coaches pining to play in Class LL. For good reasons.

Wouldn't it make more sense if schools like Sacred Heart - which moved up to LL in 2010 voluntarily - had the option of going to Class M or Class L, too? Only Sacred Heart officials know in their sacred little hearts whether they'd have moved to M or L this year. But it's a better, fairer option than dates with Windsor and Hillhouse.

The great Tom Doyle, the former coach at Fitch, always reminded me the perils of Class LL. He knew. His best teams went to the Class LL Tournament to die. This was never fully appreciated until Kris Dunn's senior year at New London. The Whalers were forced to move to LL after the 27-0 season in 2011 and the Class L title. New London's path to repeating as state champion featured the following menu in the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals:

Windsor (eight-time state champion), St. Joseph (11-time state champion) and Hillhouse (22-time state champion).

And so while Sacred Heart's perch in Class S will produce various harangues from other Class S outposts as the tournament progresses, can you really, truly blame the Hearts for their decision? I understand that the favorite pastime among people who watch high school sports in Connecticut is to criticize someone else's schedule. But even with Heron and the school-of-choice advantage, I'm not sure a school with roughly 200 boys belongs playing in Class LL.

But it's certainly a better argument if we're talking Class M or Class L. It would make for a better, more competitive tournament at more levels.

The CIAC gets mad props and bon mots for moving the state tournament to Mohegan Sun. It's not just a tournament now, but an event. This would be a way to enhance the product. Because at the moment, if they scheduled start times based on drama, Class S would begin 6 a.m.

I don't know how many other years the same circumstances will apply. But programs across Connecticut would be more enticed to move up divisions voluntarily if it weren't so punitive. Surely, this merits further discussion.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.

Twitter: @BCgenius