official division IV boys' poll for january 27

Official CIF-SS Boys' Division IV-AA & IV-A Polls
For Week Of Jan. 27, 2003--(Jan. 27, 2003)

Ok, so we just haven't had the time to do our own SoCalHoops polls the past week and a half. We issued a few last week, but we're the first to admit that unless we're going to give it a concerted effort to get it done in a timely fashion, it doesn't make sense to issue them late, and as a practical matter they do the real poll-makers (i.e., the CIF-SS SCIBCA members who compile the official polls) no good at all unless they're finished and in the can by late Sunday....Anything beyond that time-frame, and it's almost counter-productive for us to compile them simply because of the enormity of the task. Perhaps they are fun to read, but they are so labor intensive to prepare and of so little real utility to anyone but the most die-hard of fans, that we're going to forego doing our own polls for yet another week. Who knows, maybe work (as in real work) which has prevented us from devoting the time needed to do these polls, will ease up, but we don't see that happening, at least not this week. But in lieu of our own fun stuff, we're happy to pass along the official polls, the ones prepared by SCIBCA.....Hey, it's the best we can do, and besides that, they're official and they were released just this afternoon.

Division IV-AA is unchanged except for Murphy which dropped out of the top four and moved into No. 5, making way for Twentynine Palms to take the No. 4 spot. Otherwise, the division is unchanged from the prior week's official poll.

In Division IV-A, everything remains the same, except for San Gabriel Academy, which was formerly unranked and which moves into the No. 9 spot, while Arrowhead Christian falls out of the top 10 and into the "others" category.

Of course, none of this is really the news in IV-A....The hot topic is sure to be the fact that the CIF-SS has declared Montclair Prep to be ineligible for playoffs in all sports for a period of one year, and thus, the No. 2 team in the division probably won't be ranked at all as a result next week, because, as we've explained many times before, the rankings, at least the official ones, are used for purposes of seeding the top four teams when the playoff brackets are filled out. And this is important, because only the top four teams are truly considered "seeds"....meaning that the top four teams truly are placed in the bracket such that No. 1 will meet No. 4 in the semis, and No. 2 and 3 will meet, hopefully leading to a No. 1 vs. No. 2 Section finals....Of course, it rarely works out that way except on paper, but at any rate, we don't expect to see the official SCIBCA polls wasting a seed spot on a team which cannot participate in the playoffs, no matter how good the team really is in the real world.

(As of 1/27/03)

DIV. IV-AA	DIV. IV-A
1. Orange Lutheran (1)	1. Verbum Dei (1)
2. La Salle (2)	2. Montclair Prep (2)
3. Oaks Christian (3)	3. Campbell Hall (3)
5. Twentynine Palms (5)	4. St Margaret’s (4)
4. Murphy (4)	5. Flintridge Prep (5)
6. Brentwood (6)	6. Western Christian (6)
7. Crossroads (7)	7. Kilpatrick (7)
8. Village Christian (8)	8. Yeshiva (8)
9. Rosamond (9)	9. San Gabriel Academy (NR)
10. Mary Star (10)	10. Bell-Jeff (10)
Others: Maranatha, St. Bernard, Cantwell Scrd Hrt., Crespi, Laguna Beach, St. Monica, Valley Chr/C, Loma Linda Academy	Others: Arrowhead Christian (9), Brethren Christian, Fairmont, Hamilton