High School Sports Column

By Roger Murray
Whittier Daily News Prep Editor

So, they're letting in those other guys, the ones who may have fattened up their record with a weak preseason schedule, then fumbled and stumbled their way through the league season. 

It usually takes 10 wins and a petition to get the CIF-Southern Section administrators to even recognize a potential playoff candidate, and then only if they needed a couple of teams to fill out a division's bracket. 

The only guaranteed spots in the tournament were secured by finishing among the top three places in league. 

This year, for high school basketball teams, 10 victories opens the door. You have to let the CIF office know you're interested participating in the playoffs by filing a petition, but that combination of criteria guarantees entry. No petition is denied. 

When the pairings are made public Monday, there are bound to be grumblings about teams entered who struggled to win one or two league contests and played less than .500 ball overall, but managed to qualify because they have the mandatory 10 victories. 

The usual comments dripping with sarcasm will be uttered concerning the wisdom of including teams whose questionable quality kept them from competing favorably in league play. 

In the media's mind, clearly the integrity of the tournament will be impugned. 

What if one of those teams should step up and win? 

That's easy. 

More power to them! 

This is just a tournament, a third season in which everyone starts over. Some teams have become healthier. Some finally are understanding what their coach has been trying to teach them all season. 

And some just welcome a chance to eradicate the bad taste of what has been a season of frustration and anguish and maybe bad luck.

Who cares the reason? 

This tournament isn't going to discover the ultimate team in each division. 

That is determined by a performance established over several months and 20-plus games. By the time the playoffs begin, the most creditable teams have been determined, and should they lose, it should do little to discredit them. 

A disappointment, yes. Frustration, yes. 

But the winner from here on merely is the team that plays the best in that game. 

Anything can happen, and that's what makes so incredible UCLA's string of seven consecutive NCAA championships and 10 in 12 years, in a string of sudden-death challenges. 

Bad officiating, an off-night, a career performance by an opponent's adrenaline-pumped reserve off the bench, these are things that can cost the favored team on a given night. A day later, that favorite might beat the same opponent by 30. 

If a decision is made that gives all teams that meet reasonable requirements a chance, whether it be a second or third opportunity to turn what has been a negative into a positive, so what.

The more the merrier. 

When it's over, chances are the top five or six teams going in will finish among the top five or six in the tournament. The possibility that they might not is what gives the playoffs flavor and increases the anticipation.

If there is a fear that some less-than-desirable team will upset a predetermined favorite, and that potential situation should be avoided by simply denying the undesirable entry into the tournament, then the integrity of the competition really would be in question. 

No matter who wins, the outcome will be determined on the court, not by what the team has done in previous months. 

And that's what a playoff is all about.

High School Sports Column

By Keven Chavez
Pasadena Star-News Prep Editor

On Sunday, playoff pairings will be released by the CIF-Southern Section in high school basketball. Hundreds of schools eagerly will await the decisions of the seeding committee to find out whom they will have to face in the postseason. 

But exactly who plays who in the playoffs? 

Each sport appears to have its own set of rules about where teams are allocated in the playoffs. The basketball playoffs are turning out to be the most confusing of all. 

Here's the skinny: schools are grouped into five divisions, according to enrollment. Each division is split into two subdivisions -- except one.  

The problem is since most high schools either are very big or very small, there only are enough schools in the middle for a single Division III-AA.  

Since enrollment is the determining factor, teams in the same league are splintered into different divisions in the playoffs. The top three finishers in each (six-team) league previously would make the playoffs in their respective divisions, plus as many at-large teams as needed to fill out the brackets. 

Since Division I is overloaded with about 150 schools, deserving fourth-or fifth-place teams in tough
leagues would not enter the playoffs as at-large teams. 

So just a few weeks ago, the CIF-SS office came up with a solution. Any school with at least 10 wins automatically would enter the playoffs if it applies in time. 

Ten wins and you're in. I can only imagine the coach of some nine-game winner dialing up every school in California trying to find a game tonight.

It was an eleventh-hour decision, and hopefully we won't be subjected to three wild-card rounds in Division I. There already is talk about splitting Division I into three or four divisions next season. 

I previously criticized the football playoffs, and their 13 divisions, for lessening the value of a championship. 

But at least the football playoffs have something that is badly missing from basketball -- an identity. 

Football playoff divisions are each made up of a small number of leagues. Division III, for example, consists of the Foothill, Mission, Golden and Pacific leagues. Each one sends three or four teams and a champion is decided. 

The advantage is the players, coaches and fans all know exactly who they will meet in the playoffs. League play becomes a huge determining factor for seedings, and the opportunity to beat a league rival in the playoffs is possible.  

In basketball, you need a road map to figure out where you land and whom you may face in the playoffs.

What a dream matchup it would be to have Pasadena and Muir meet in the playoffs. But it won't happen. Pasadena's enrollment of 2,000 puts it in Division II-AA; Muir, at 1,500, lands in Division II-A.

The CIF-SS is saying the entire Pacific League should be a mismatch. Since enrollment decides how a school is grouped in the playoffs, Arcadia, Hoover and Glendale should dominate the little guys at Pasadena, Muir and Crescenta Valley. 

That's funny ... the smaller three schools lead the league by a landslide. 

And being in Division I must mean being the best teams. It's interesting the consensus top two teams in Southern California, Dominguez and Artesia, are in Division II-AA and II-A, respectively. 

Teams play in their specific leagues for a reason. They are conveniently located with similar enrollments
and competitive balance. Why go a step beyond that? 

It's time to let the players on the floor, not the number of desks in the schools, determine our high school champions. 

DAN SHIELLS
Santa Barbara News-Press
2/4/00

The landscape CIF basketball dramatically changed when the Southern Section office announced abruptly a couple weeks ago that all teams which qualify for and petition for at-large berths will be included in the playoffs.

In the past, at-large teams were at the mercy of a random numbers games. If spots were available after teams which qualified through their leagues were placed in the bracket, at-large teams were added. If more teams qualified through their leagues than spots were available, a wild card round was played to reduce the field to 32 teams (or 16 if less than 24 teams qualified). At-large teams never played in wild card games.

The new rule will throw all at-large teams into the mix and a wild card game will be created if necessary to
accommodate them.

Old-timers no doubt will recall the days when only league champions got into the playoffs. But, in the new reality of enrollment-based playoffs, the change was long overdue. The old playoffs were based on strength-of-league (football still is). All the teams from a single league went to the same playoff bracket. It made no sense to add wild card games to let in additional teams.

But in enrollment playoffs, a single league could send teams to three or four different divisions.  Often, a fourth-place finisher in a strong league made up of larger schools turns out to be the best team when placed among schools its own size.

Dos Pueblos, for instance, won the boys 3-A title in 1990 despite finishing in fourth place in league with a record below .500. That particular season, an at-large spot was available. The previous year, with a similar team, there was no spot and the Chargers stayed home.

Sometimes, at the same school, a girls team gets an at-large berth while a boys teams does not.

Such random luck should not be part of a playoff system. Now, the question is, why not do the same for other sports which have enrollment playoffs, such as soccer, volleyball, baseball or softball?

Is it fair, for instance, that San Marcos High's girls basketball team can finish last in the Channel League and be guaranteed a playoff spot because it won at least 10 games while the Royals' boys soccer team can be left out despite a record of 14-4-6?

"Yeah, but the CIF knows it can make money on basketball," said San Marcos coach Abe Jahadhmy. "They won't do it for soccer because of the money."

Jahadhmy is probably right. Few administrators would admit it publicly but they would rather have less than more playoff teams because they want to avoid the travel costs. This is particularly so in Orange County, where schools live in fear of having to send a team all the way to --  gasp -- Santa Barbara.

Nonetheless, fair is fair and the CIF-Southern Section's about face on the wild card round for basketball could well signal a change for other sports if the coaches of those organizations ask for it.

In some divisions, this isn't such a big deal.

Last year in Division 2A boys basketball, for instance, there weren't enough at-large bids to fill out a 32-team bracket so the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds got first-round byes. 

But in divisions 1 and 5, it is a big deal. Regularly there are no at-large teams in those divisions because there are too many schools that receive automatic bids.

Some teams, people felt, deserved to go, but didn't get the opportunity because of the difficulty of their leagues. Proponents will point to Rialto and Rowland Heights Rowland last year: teams that had twice as many wins as losses but didn't receive automatic playoff bids. 

I like the sentiment, but not the application.

Before we find a solution, let's look at the problem. Since there are state playoffs and championships for basketball, the CIF State sets the enrollment levels (for grades 10-12) for each division. Division 1 is 1,500 and up, Division 2 is 1,125-1,499, Division 3 is 750-1,124, Division 4 is 301-749 and Division 5 is 300 and below.

The Southern Section then sets its own guidelines for dividing up each division into AA and A. 

The problem is, the state divisions are too far out of whack.

There are a total of 1,262 state member-schools in CIF, 519 in the Southern Section alone. The rest are divided among the other nine sections in the state, with the Sac-Joaquin Section (159 schools) as the second-largest.

The divisions seem to be proportioned with other sections in mind, because it certainly doesn't work for the Southern Section. 

There are 145 schools in Division 1 and 153 in Division 5 for boys basketball in the Southern Section. But there are only 39 in Division 3. There are so few schools in Division 3 that the Southern Section combined 3AA and 3A into one division.

There have been some suggested alternatives. One would divide Division 1 in to four divisions instead of two. Instead of four finalists advancing to the state playoffs, four champions would go. That might help, but you'd either have 16-team brackets with no (or few) wild cards, or a 32-team bracket without enough teams qualified to fill it.

The enrollment breakdowns certainly need to change. The Southern Section shouldn't be penalized for having so many large schools. With a level of 1,500 students and more for Division 1, there are some large disparities in enrollment in 1AA. Some schools have enrollment of 1,500 more than another school in that division.  

In theory, I don't have a problem with granting more teams at-large berths into the playoffs. The problem is, do teams with 10 wins really belong in? I don't think so. In other sports, you need at least a .500 record to qualify for an at-large berth. In fact four years ago, there was a football division that didn't have a single team eligible for the one at-large berth. So one team had a bye. 

With this new format, you're going to have second-place teams playing wild card games. Is that fair when they're probably playing a 10-16 team that went 3-7 in league?

There's no easy way to fix things, but here goes: reconfigure the divisions so there aren't so many schools in Division 1 or 5. Teams can apply for at-large berths with at least a .500 record. Put a cap on the number of teams in each division before the brackets are drawn up (for instance, 40 in 1AA). 

Then we'll have competitive basketball with deserving teams.