Division III-AA boys bracket

SoCalHoops High School News

CIF-SS Boys Division III-AA Bracket:
First Round & Wild Cards--(Feb. 16, 2003)

This is a 16-team bracket with six "Wild-Card" games, including Game F which pits Santa Margarita against Western, an interesting game if only because SM should have been a seeded team, since it was ranked the entire year among the top four in the division, but which couldn't be seeded as an "at-large" team, a status which it enjoys only because it is in the ultra-competitive four-team Serra League, a league in which Santa Margarita finished third, and thus missed out on an automatic bid. If Santa Margarita wins the wild card game, they will meet the putative No. 2 seed, Arlington in the first round, a game which might have happened anyway, since Arlington finished tied for second in league.

Here are the list of Wild Card games, all of which will be played on Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003 at 7:30 p.m. at the host school (listed second):

Game A	Culver City @ Newbury Park
Game B	Servite @ Pioneer
Game C	Mountain View @ Pacifica/Oxnard
Game D	Palm Desert @ Barstow
Game E	Bonita @ Pomona
Game F	Santa Margarita @ Western

The four "seeded" teams in the bracket are: No. 1 Artesia, No. 2 Arlington, No. 3 Calabasas, and No. 4 Pacifica (Garden Grove). Here's the bracket:

First round games Friday February 21			Quarterfinals Tuesday Feb. 25	Semifinals Friday Feb. 28	Finals March 8 @ The Pond
Apple Valley	@	Artesia
Wild Card A	@	Monrovia
Wild Card B	@	Atascadero
Wild Card C	@	Pacifica/GG
Temple City	@	Calabasas
Wild Card D	@	Los Altos
Wild Card E	@	Diamond Ranch
Wild Card F	@	Arlington

All games with the exception of the final round will start at 7:30 p.m. unless another time is mutually agreed upon and clearance is received from the CIF-SS Office. Public coin flips will be held in the lobby of the CIF-SS Office at 9:00 a.m. the day following each playoff game [these coin flips will determine subsquent sites after the first round, i.e., which school will be the host]. Coin flips will be available after 9:30 a.m. and we'll try to keep everyone posted with them here.