San Francisco Boys Playoffs

3/7/04 Update: Congratulations to Lowell, the 2003-04 San Francisco City Section Academic Athetic Association (AAA) Champions, and to Lowell, the former two-time defending champions and this year's runner-up.

The San Francisco Section is tiny by Southern California standards. It consists of just 10 teams divided into two "Divisions," the Lang and Neff Divisions. The term "divisions" is a bit deceiving because we would call them "leagues" since technically, they have nothing to do with CBED enrollment playoff "divisions" as that term is used in the rest of the State CIF. The Section Champion and Runner-up will both advance to the State Northern Regional Tournament, receiving automatic bids into the appropriate enrollment-based division for each such school (e.g., I, II, III, IV or V). We've listed the schools in each league, as well as which enrollment-division they will play in if they are lucky enough to advance to the State Northern Regional Tournament.

"NEFF" Division	CIF State Enrollment	"LANG" Division	CIF State Enrollment
Burton	I	Balboa	III
Galileo	II	Lincoln	I
Int'l Studies Acad.	IV	Marshall	III
Lowell	I	Mission	III
Wallenberg	IV	Washington	I

Here's the San Francisco Section Boys' bracket. The final is this Friday, between Lincoln and Lowell:

San Francisco CIF Sectional Championship Bracket
First Round Friday Feb. 27	Second Round Wed. March 3	Championship Friday Mar. 5
Galileo 49 (Neff #4) @ Lincoln 70 (Lang #1)	Lincoln 48 @ Kezar Wallenberg 41	Lincoln 43 @ Kezar Lowell 46
Mission 36 (Lang #3) @ Wallenberg 51 (Neff #2)
Marshall 72 (Lang #4) @ Burton 100 (Neff #1)	Burton 61 @ Kezar Lowell 69
Lowell 58 (Neff #3) @ Washington 54 (Lang #2)

The bracket's first round matchups were based on the final standings following the last regular season games played on February 24, 2004:

Place	Team	Wins	Losses	Games Behind
1	Burton	11	2	--
2	Wallenberg	8	5	3.0
3	Lowell	6	7	6.0
4	Galileo	5	8	7.0
5	I.S.A.	3	10	8.5

Place	Team	Wins	Losses	Games Behind
1	Lincoln	9	4	--
2	Washington	8	5	--
3	Mission	8	5	1.0
4	Marshall	4	9	4.0
5	Balboa	3	10	5.5

Washington evidently got the tie-breaker to take the second place spot in the Lang Division based on head-to-head competition according to the San Francisco CIF website. but lost anyway in the first round.