SoCalHoops HS Playoff News
SoCalHoops HS Playoff News
LA City Section Boys
"Invitational Bracket"
(Final Update Mar. 7, 2004)
Here's the LA City Section "Invitational" bracket. This bracket consists of the teams who were seeded 17-32 in the City Section, i.e., those who did not qualify for automatic entry into the City Championship bracket (8 teams) or those other 8 who were not considered strong enough to make the City Championship bracket . This year, there was also a sort of screwup in the seeding process, and the Section held a "play in" game between Eagle Rock and Bravo Magnet, to determine which team would be the last place seed and get to play King Drew in the first round.
That game was played on Wednesday, February 18, and Eagle Rock won, 61-42, but promptly lost their first round game. As a result, King Drew advances and will play Gardena. Neither of the first round games for either King Drew or Gardena were reported in any papers, and so we don't have the scores, and they weren't posted on Max Preps either. As if you'd never heard this, it's probably worth repeating that unlike the City Championship bracket, the winner and runner-up in this bracket do not advance to the State Regional Tournament. In other words, this is a self-contained tournament, and the winner gets a nice trophy, bragging rights, and the chance to continue into the post-season playoffs, but that's about it.... All games begin at 7:30 p.m. and the host team is always the higher seeded team throughout the tournament.| City Invitational Playoffs 2003-2004 | |||
First Round |
Second Round |
Semifinals |
Finals |
No. 16 Eagle Rock L |
Gardena 60 @ King-Drew 82 |
Locke 70
@
King-Drew 82 |
King-Drew
Time TBA
LA Jordan |
No. 9 Huntington Park L |
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| No. 12 Franklin 62 @ No. 5 San Pedro 58 |
Locke 62 @ Franklin 49 |
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No. 13 Locke W |
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| No. 14 Foshay Magnet 64 @ No. 3 LA Jordan 75 |
LACES 50 @ LA Jordan 53 |
LA Jordan 60
@
Garfield 50 |
|
No. 11 LA Marshall 46 |
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No. 10 LA Polytechnic L |
Jefferson 80 @
|
||
No. 15 SOCES Magnet
82 |
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We want to thank Jack Pollon for calling us with the original bracket just after it was released so it could be posted immediately. He also filled us in on what the seeding committee had to deal with in this bracket. In particular, one will immediately notice the absence from the both the City Championship bracket and the Invitational of teams like Canoga Park, Granada Hills, North Hollywood, Hollywood, Reseda, etc., all of whom might be considered to have been stronger and more worthy playoff-caliber teams than some of those which were chosen to play in this bracket. But apparently, a confluence of events, as well as the seeding priorities for teams from the Magnet Conferences (which now consists of two separate leagues), conspired to actually make this bracket look more like a Magnet tournament than the City Invitiationals.
First, because the Magnet Conference is not guaranteed a spot in the Championship bracket, the criteria for the Invitational bracket requires that both the 1st and 2nd place Magnet teams be taken into the Invitational bracket to compensate. But of course, that rule was enacted before the Magnet Conference was split into two leagues (Freeway and Crosstown), and now that there are two Magnet Leagues, the rules require that a guaranteed 4 teams (1st and 2nd) each get a berth guaranteed. And, this year, since LACES and Foshay tied for second in their league, five Magnet teams wound up getting guaranteed spots in the bracket.
Which means that out of 18 teams from the Valley region of the City Section, only two teams made it to the Invitational, and only 5 teams from that area made it to the City Championship.
Clearly there's got to be a better system than this.....One more reason why the City Section coaches ought to get together to re-examine their entire structure.
In any event, the bracket is what it is, and it still should make for some interesting games.
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