Division II-AA bracket

Division II-AA is a 32 team bracket, and not surprisingly, Dominguez was the No. 1 seed in this bracket. There is a little bit of controversy going on with this bracket, and the CIF-SS office issued it with a major caveat, concerning position of the Bay League teams. Specifically, there is an appeal pending which involves Inglewood. While the CIF-SS wouldn't comment further than just to say that "there's an appeal pending, and we don't want to comment on it because we don't want to affect anyone's rights in the process" (and that's the official quote from Jim Staunton, the CIF-SS Commissioner) the word buzzing around the room was that the issue involves whether or not Inglewood may have had an ineligible player on their roster following DeAngelo Collins' departure from the team. If Inglewood is required to forfeit any games as a result, then this will likely result in switching Inglewood with Redondo in the bracketing (that's not the official word from CIF, we're just speculating. . . .). In any event, there will be a hearing at the Southern Section offices tomorrow morning at 9:30 a.m. and the Section will then make a determination on whatever the real issue is and how it will affect the bracket.

But for now, here's the bracket for this Division. As with the other brackets, the top four teams (using the SCIBCA Polls) were the "seeded" teams, and they are at the extreme ends of both halves of the brackets. The rest of the teams were placed such that first place league finishers (who also mostly happened to be ranked teams) got first round byes, where available. Thereafter, the teams were placed using league finishes, geographical considerations were applied and so on. While we can't say that the bracketing is perfect, the committee(which this year consisted of five CIF commissioners--(Ray Plutko, a former CIF Southern Section Commissioner, Dean Crowley, also a former CIF-SS Commissioner, Jim Staunton, current CIF-SS Commissioner, Hal Harkness, the former LA CIF Section Commissioner, and Paul Castillo, the new Assistant Commissioner of Basketball for the Southern Section) did a pretty fair and equitable job in our view. But if you have complaints, talk to them.

All first round games in this division are on Friday, February 18, while the Second Round will be February 22. We'll complete the bracketing (for the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals) later tonight through the other rounds, but for now, we wanted to at least get the first two rounds up and posted.

First round games February 18			Second Round Feb. 22	Quarterfinals Feb. 25 Alternate site	Semifinals Feb. 29 Alternate Site	Finals March 4 The Pond
Upper Half of Bracket
San Bernardino	@	Dominguez
El Monte	@	Norte Vista
Ramona	@	Cathedral City
Compton	@	Bellflower
Garden Grove	@	Redondo
Cypress	@	La Serna
Moorpark	@	Anaheim Canyon
South Torrance	@	Pasadena
Lower Half of Bracket
Westlake	@	Inglewood
Foothill	@	West Torrance
Buena Park	@	Littlerock
Los Amigos	@	Santa Margarita
Torrance	@	Brea Olinda
Gahr	@	Newport Harbor
Valencia/P	@	La Quinta/LQ
Temescal Canyon	@	Chaparral

Essentially, through the first rounds, teams receiving a bye in the first round shall be the host team in the next round. All games with the excepiton fo 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. ithe 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.