SoCalHoops High School News

Boys Division V-AA Bracket:
Updated First Round Pairings--(Feb 14, 2000)

***This update is being issued at 11:30 p.m. on February 14 to reflect a change in the bracketing:

According to sources at the CIF-SS Office and at the LA Times, the Southern Section office today switched the bracket in Division V-AA.   Pilibos and Montclair Prep have now been switched in the brackets.  We confirmed this by speaking with LA Times sports editors and with Howard Abrams, one of the coaches at Montclair Prep, who informed us that Montclair got the call from the CIF this afternoon at about noon time informing them of the game change.   Accordingly, pending further confirmation from the CIF-SS Office directly, we're going to reflect the change in the bracket.  The change  potentially sets up a yet another second round matchup between two ranked teams, No. 6 Buckley and No. 8 Montclair Prep.

We've left our original commentary on the brackets posted yesterday just to keep this change in the bracketing in context.

Like Division I-AA, Division V-AA is a very large bracket, a 64 team bracket involving 51 teams, so there will be some first round byes.  Basically, 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.  In this Division, Pacific Hills got the No. 1 seed, Campbell Hall got the No. 2 seed and Calvary Chapel Downey and Bell-Jeff got the No. 3 and No. 4 seeds, straight out of the SCIBCA Polls.   It also looks like the rest of the ranked teams, at least those which also won their leagues, got first round byes, including Buckley, Calvary Chapel Downey, Santa Clara, and Chadwick.  Ribet, which wasn't a Top 10 team in the last poll, won the Heritage League and got a bye.

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 for the most part in our view.  But if you have complaints, talk to them.

And in this bracket, we know that there will be a lot of talking.  Two interesting things occurred in this bracket.  First, Valley Torah was moved from Division V-A where they've been ranked all year to Division V-AA.   We're not sure why, but evidently someone from the school phoned the CIF-SS office on Friday and let them know that the enrollment figures were higher than originally submitted.

The second thing that occurred with this bracket is that Montclair Prep, which enters as an "at-large" petition team, one of only three in the entire division, (they're at-large because they finished 4th in Delphic League, a six team league and only the top three teams automatically qualify), was put in the same half of the bracket, indeed the same quarter of the bracket as league rival Campbell Hall. . . . if Montclair Prep can get past Villanova Prep (which they should if our instincts are correct on this one. . . no offense to Villanova), and if Campbell Hall can beat Pasadena Poly (which they also should be able to do), then the second round will see a matchup of two teams that played last Thursday in a league final.  We're not sure who is going to be more upset about this bracket, Brian Haloosim the coach of Campbell Hall or Howard Abrams and Greg Patterson, the co-coaches at Montclair Prep, but we're sure that a lot of people will be making some noise about it. . . we're going to reserve judgment for now, because basically, other than having two teams meet in the early rounds that have been ranked all year in the SCIBCA polls among the top 10, something that CIFseems to have avoided for the most part,  this will provide a lot of drama early on in the playoffs and give us all another game to really look forward to seeing.

All first round games are on February 16.  We'll post up the rest of the rounds (third, quarterfinals, semis, and finals) later this evening.   For now, here are the first two rounds. 

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. 

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