Division III-AA bracket

By combining Divisions III-AA and III-A this year, the section finally has come up with a more competitive bracket. The combined Division III-AA features a 32 team bracket with some first round byes (there are actually 29 teams that will participate and only two byes in the first round). Bishop Montgomery was the No. 1 Seed, San Dimas was the No. 2 seed and Corona Del Mar and Harvard-Westlake received the remaining two seeds.

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 Wednesday, February 16, while the Second Round will be February 18.

First round games February 16			Second Round February 18	Quarterfinals Feb 22	Semifinals Feb 25	Finals March 4 @ LMU
Upper half of Bracket
Bishop Montgomery	@	Bye	Bishop Montgomery
Granite Hills	@	Banning	Bishop Montgomery
St. Francis	@	Pomona
Costa Mesa	@	Monrovia
Morningside	@	Santa Ynez
Diamond Ranch	@	Gladstone
La Canada	@	Nordhoff
Ganesha	@	Harvard-Westlake
Lower half of Bracket
Corona Del Mar	@	Bye	Corona Del Mar
Northview	@	Cabrillo	Corona Del Mar
Estancia	@	Verbum Dei
Workman	@	Notre Dame/SO
Santa Paula	@	Centennial Compton
Chaminade	@	South Pasadena
Azusa	@	Gabrielino	San Dimas
San Dimas	@	Bye	San Dimas

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.