SoCalHoops High School News

A Word On Our Revised SoCalHoops
Top 20/15/10 HS Polls--(Dec. 17, 2000)

As we've written previously, the SoCalHoops Top 20 HS Polls are a new feature here, one that we're just getting the hang of doing, and like everything else, they're subjective, just an expression of opinion, nothing more and nothing less.  However, since we watch a lot of basketball, and have in the past assisted with the preparation of some other widely read polls, we thought we'd simply start posting our own.  

A couple of weeks ago, we issued some very early preseason polls for what was formerly the old D-I and half of D-II, but within a day or two it became apparent to us that with the reconfiguration and the new CBED numbers issued by the CIF, along with three subdivisions in D-I (consisting of I-AAA, I-AA and I-A),  together with the fact that many teams were relocated to different divisions, that it was time for us to take another look and start over. . . and that's just what we've done with these newly revised polls.  The old ones are still there, but these new ones are, we think, a better and more reasoned look, and we've also had the benefit of a couple of weeks of preseason tournaments to gauge some of the strengths and weaknesses of our prior picks.

Some teams that have been ranked in other preseason polls (e.g., SCIBCA- SS-CIF) may or may not be ranked in the same relative positions in our polls.  Frankly, in some of the divisions, like the larger enrollment divisions, it's been quite a job just figuring out who is playing where and getting results.  And in other divisions, notably in III-AAA for instance,  and in both IV-A and IV-AA as well, it's nearly next to impossible to rank 20 teams overall (in a couple of those divisions there aren't even 20 teams who should be ranked) so we've cut the numbers back to 15 in D-III and 10 each in both the D-IV divisions.

One other division poll we will issue later tonight deserves some comment, and that's Division V-A, the smallest of the small schools divisions.  In all the other polls, you'll notice that we've had something to say about each of the teams we've ranked.  But in D-VA there are more than 75 teams, small teams from tiny schools which usually play in outlying areas, and we can't possibly see them all, certainly not this early in the year, and more than likely even later we won't get to see many of them during regular season either.   So with respect to that division only, we have not issued any corresponding descriptions of the teams. . . too time-consuming, and for most of the top 10 teams we really don't have anything to say anyway. . . of course, that's what a lot of people think about a lot of what we write. . . and to that, all we can say is, "oh well".

See you around the gym.

 
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