Precise details are not yet known about the proposed plan to alter the state high school boys’ basketball tournament for next season. Read: Nobody knows which schools will be earmarked for specific divisions. It’s doubtful we’ll know until sometime in September.

But here’s how the high school basketball coaches of Connecticut will judge the new format:

A great idea if they’re placed in a favorable division.

A dumb idea if they’re not.

This is how it works.

What’s in it for us?

And yet now is the most objective period to offer comment, before details of new divisions are released and the demons of self-interest shroud the bigger picture.

We start here: Mad props and bon mots to state tournament director Bob Cecchini for at least acknowledging that “schools of choice” have cut a swath through the Class S and Class M divisions in recent years, winning six of the last eight state titles.

Cecchini and some trusted colleagues have proposed a plan they hope will bring more equity — not equality — to the tournament. Remember the difference between equity and equality: equity is a fair baseline. Equality is where everybody is the same and has an equal amount of achievement. It's not possible.

Cecchini’s plan replaced Class LL, L, M and S with Divisions 1, 2, 3 and 4. Schools will be placed in each division based on a combination of enrollment and performance. Cecchini examined results from all schools over the last three years and all schools’ appearances in the state quarterfinals, semifinals and championship games over the past 14 years.

Cecchini and his colleagues, none of whom are currently coaching, ranked all 184 schools (again using a combination of enrollment and performance). They’ll be placed in the four divisions: 40 schools in Division 1, 47 in Divisions 2 and 3, and 50 in Division 4.

Thus far, the Connecticut High School Coaches' Association and the boys’ basketball committee liked it. It goes to the state athletic directors next month and then to the CIAC Board of Control.

What nobody knows yet: Where will the roughly 50 “schools of choice” be placed? The CIAC defines “schools of choice” as “all schools that can draw students from numerous communities or from outside their district's boundaries,” which includes charter, magnet, parochial, technical and vocational agriculture.

In recent years, choice school Sacred Heart, with Auburn-bound Mustapha Heron, has played for the same trophy as Tourtellotte and Wheeler, among others. Anybody who quibbles about the need for change doesn’t get it, doesn’t want to or has an agenda.

My question: Is Cecchini’s mechanism to forge change realistic? I’m not sure there’s anybody in our state with enough institutional knowledge of state boys’ basketball to accurately seed all 184 teams, except, perhaps for Joe Morelli of GameTimeCT and Frank and Sheila Beneski, a Suffield couple that sees (honestly) about 100 games per year all over the state.

My concern: The curious example of Bacon Academy, a Class M public school. Bacon has made the Class M quarters three times and semifinals once in the last three years. It has won north of 15 games each season and won the ECC Tournament in March. Good program. It’s not a stretch to suggest the Bobcats would be ranked in the top 50 or 60 among the state’s 184, thus placing them in Divisions 1 or 2.

They don’t belong there.

Success or not, they’re an example of a school that needs relief, right there with other small publics that have been successful in recent years: Granby, Lewis Mills, Waterford and Northwestern Regional, among others. Two of Bacon’s last three seasons, by the way, have ended with losses to schools of choice.

Hopefully, Cecchini’s assemblage understands the fundamental objective of a new format: equity for small public high schools. And there is nothing in this discussion — nothing — more important to understand and accept than this:

Just because schools have similar boys' enrollments hardly necessitates a balanced state tournament model. It's the mechanism behind the way enrollments are formed, not the numbers themselves. A public high school and school of choice might have 300 boys apiece. But if the public high school's pool of potential players comes from one town and the school of choice draws from multiple towns, the school of choice has a competitive advantage. Perpetually.

Again: If you disagree with that, your agenda is staging a coup d’état on your common sense.

At least Cecchini and the CIAC have started the process. The road to recovery begins with admitting the problem exists.

This is the opinion of Day sports columnist Mike DiMauro.