early results from v-aa friday 2/16

For those who don't really know, or who haven't had the time to think about such things, there are 10 CIF Sections spread throughout the State of California. Only 4 of them (Central, LA City, Southern and San Diego) are located in SoCal. What about the rest of the State? What's happening in the six NorCal Sections, and how do they conduct their playoffs to determine Section Champions, which in turn determines who gets to compete in the State Championship Tournament?

We already know how the Central, LA City, Southern and San Diego Sections hold their tournaments. If you want to see the brackets, and how any team is currently doing, just click on this link for the info we have here at SoCalHoops, or you can get the brackets from each of the official websites for the SoCal Sections (Southern, LA City, San Diego, and Central). Playoffs are either well underway (Southern & LA) or just getting started (San Diego and Central).

In the Northern half of the state, things are just getting started also, and in some sections, playoffs to determine section champions and runners-up will begin this week and next. We'll take a look at each section below in more detail.

Why is all this important? Well, maybe it's not to some, but to those teams with aspirations of playing at ARCO Arena in March, the winners of each CIF Section Championship (and most of the runners-up as well, with a few exceptions in D-I) from each of the four SoCal CIF Sections will get to challenge for a State title. The California State Championship is really two different tournaments, one held in the North, and another in the South, and the winner of each meets in Sacramento to determine the overall State Champion each enrollment division (I, II, III, IV and V). Each bracket in each enrollment division in both NorCal and SoCal (8 teams in each) play for a Regional Championship. The Regional Champions meet in Sacramento for the State finals.

Who gets selected from the North and the South? Each of the CIF Sections has their own slightly different (and sometimes peculiar) ways of crowning a Section Champion. In the SoCal divisions, it's pretty self-evident. But in the North, things are a bit different, especially with Sections like Oakland and San Francisco. But more on that shortly. . . before we get to that, we'll have to work backwards, in order to make sense of it all.

The Selection Process for the State Tournament: The Importance of Section Championships

Entry from the Southern part of the State is pretty straight-forward. All five enrollment divisions consist of an eight-team bracket. Section entries are determined as follows:

Division I : Central gets 1 team (the Champion), Southern 4 (Champions of I-AAA, I-AA, and I-A, and one of the three runners-up, to be determined by a committee), San Diego 1 (the Champion), and Los Angeles 2 (Champion and runner up); there is also a procedure for one possible "At-Large" entry, in the event one of the LA City Section teams declares for D-II (which hasn't and won't happen).

(If the CIF Los Angeles City Section has only entry--and remember, this never happens, because LA City teams never elect to play in D-II as they can--then two at-large entries will be considered from among the Central Section, San Diego Section and Los Angeles City Sections only, not the Southern Section).

Division II: Central Section gets 2 (Champ and runner up), Southern Section 4 (II-AA and I-A champs and runners-up), and San Diego 2 teams (Champ and runner-up).

(Again, if LA City Section has a team declare for D-II--which never happens any more-- then Central would gets 1, San Diego 1, LA City 1, and Southern Section 4. Again, Southern Section would be restricted to four entrants only).

Divisions III through V : Central Section gets 2 (Champ and runner-up), Southern Section gets 4 (Champs in AA and A, and each runner up), and San Diego Section gets 2 (Champions and runner-up).

In the Northern half of the State, each CIF Section is entitled to just ONE automatic entry in each enrollment division (which means that 6 teams get in that way in D-I, because there are 6 Section Champions in Division I, but only 4 Champs in the remaining divisions, because Oakland and San Francisco are usually, but not always, D-I). Each bracket is composed of section champions and at-large teams, which will be selected from runner-up teams in the section. Of course, since there are six sections, that means that four runners-up do not get to participate. Also, in D-I only there's a slightly peculiar formula. If a section has fewer than 30 schools overall (e.g., Oakland, San Francisco), they can only send one entry (i.e., only the champion) and not an at-large entry also; but if they have more than 20 teams in D-I, then they are eligible to get two places in the D-I eight team bracket. And, for the Northern Section (one of the 6 sections) only, they also have to have won that section's "large school tournament" (i.e, the D-I/II tournament) to be an automatic entry).

Southern Section--#9 on Map. Huge. Covers just about everything in the geographical southern part of the State. More than 500 schools, it's a behemoth, hence more entries than other sections to the State Tournament.

LA City Section--#8 on the Map. Surrounded by the Southern Section, it's only the Los Angeles Unified School District schools, all 68 of them.

San Diego Section--#10 on the Map. San Diego City public and private schools in San Diego and a few Imperial County schools too (the Imperial Valley League left the Southern Section last year for the San Diego Section).

The North Coast Section of the CIF has 150 member schools in it, and is one of the biggest sections in the State. Geographically, it covers teams in Alameda, Contra Cost, Marin, San Francisco (but not the S.F. City Section schools), San Mateo, Solano, Hayward, Humboldt, Del Norte, and Mendocino counties. There are 17 leagues applicable to basketball competition (two more leagues compete just in football).

In the NCS, league competition is still going on as we write this, and the final league contests won't be completed until this Saturday, February 24, so it's a little tricky trying to figure out what the playoff picture will look like. But there is a system in place: Once all the final league contests are completed, the NCS goes through a process similar to the LA City Section, with a meeting of the coaches and AD's, who sit as a "seeding committee". The seeding committee will meet this Sunday, February 25, in Dublin, CA. At the meeting, the coaches (or non-coach representatives), will seed the league champions into their appropriate enrollment divisions, and then proceed to pick "at-large" teams for the remaining spots in each of the five brackets. Each of the 17 league champions gets an automatic berth, regardless of their enrollment division. Schools are permitted to "move up" to play in a higher enrollment bracket, but had to have to made that decision before the season began (in October, 2000). The largest brackets that the NCS will field are 16 teams. Last year, the sizes of the brackets were as follows: Division I: 8 teams; Division II: 12 teams; Division III: 16 teams; Division IV: 12 teams Division V: 12 teams

In order to qualify for the playoffs, a team has to have an overall winning record, or a winning record against teams in its own enrollment division. As noted, league champions get in automatically. Again, there are 17 different leagues in the NCS, so 17 teams will get automatic entry. If a league has more than one champion, the league has the sole discretion to determine which team gets the automatic berth. The NCS playoffs will start on Tuesday, February 27 and will conclude on March 2/3 with the NCS Championships.

The Northern Section of the CIF has already picked their playoff brackets, and play will begin tomorrow (Wednesday, February 21). There were not enough teams to field separate D-I and D-II brackets, so the two have been combined. You can check out the Northern Section playoff brackets at this link from the official CIF Northern Section website. There are 66 schools in the Northern Section.

The Sac-Joaquin Section covers the northern half of the Central Valley and the Gold Country counties (El Dorado, Sierra, Calaveras, Del Oro, etc). There are 37 teams in D-I (three, Jesuit, St. Mary's and Modesto Christian, all seeds in the D-I bracket, moved up from lower enrollment divisions). There are 29 eligible teams in D-II, 22 in D-III, 23 in D-IV, and 24 teams eligible in D-V. Playoffs in the Sac-Joaquin Section start tomorrow, February 21, and the brackets have already been picked. You can see the boys' brackets or the girls' brackets at the Sac-Joaquin's official website. Obviously, the top seeded teams are the favorites and the ones most likely to be competing in the State Tournament, but like everything else in life, sometimes the unexpected happens.

The Central Coast Section has also already done its bracketing in each of the five divisions, and the playoffs are scheduled to start this coming Saturday, February 24. The Division I boys bracket has only 7 teams in it; Division II has 21 teams a really odball sort of bracket; Division III has 23 teams, while Division IV has 9 teams, and finally Division V has only 7 teams in an 8 team bracket. The playoffs will run from today, February 20, until March 2/3 when the finals will be held in the various Divisions.

Frankly we didn't have a clue about San Francisco, since the section has no website, so we placed a call, and here's what we found out: There are only 11 teams competing in two divisions of the San Francisco Section this year (there are 12 schools, but one, O'Connell, didn't field any boys basketball teams this year, at least not in varsity). The playoffs won't start until February 23, and it will be an 8 team bracket, with seeding determined strictly by record; the second round will take place February 28, and the finals will be held March 2. As of February 15, here were the standings in the San Francisco Section:

Neff Division	Lang Division
Lowell 11-1 Burton 7-6 Wallenberg 5-7 ISA 3-9 Galileo 1-11 O'Connell--don't field team	McAteer 13-0 Lincoln 10-3 Washington 6-7 Marshall 6-7 Balboa 4-8 Mission 3-10

Once again, we had to go straight to the section for information (they too have no website) and it's not often that the top man answers the phone. In this case, a call to the section yielded Jerry Luzar, the Section Commissioner answering the call and he told us a little bit about how the playoffs work in Oakland: There are only 6 teams in the entire Oakland Section. The Oakland Section has existed for 60 years, and because of some generally historical reasons having largely to do with governance at the State level, there are really no plans in the works to eliminate the Section and merge it with some of the other largers sections.

Most of the teams in the Oakland Section have elected to play in Division I, the largest enrollment division, although according to Luzar, "We could probably split up all our schools and they would fall into each of the five State-enrollment categories." But he explained, "We don't do that, and most of our teams are competitive at the highest enrollment level, so we've elected to stay at the D-I level."

With only 6 teams in the entire Section, the Championship tournament really consists of a "Round-Robin" two or three-game deal: The No. 2 and No. 3 teams (based on overall records within the Section/League play) face off to determine which team will play the No. 1 team (again based on Section/Legue record). If the No. 1 team loses, then there's another game. If the No. 1 team loses twice, then the winner of No. 2-3 (which obviously would have beaten the No. 1 team twice) is declared the winner. If the 2-3 winner and No. 1 split, then No. 1 is declared the Section Champion and gets the bid to the State tournament.

The Oakland Section Championship tournament will take place starting on February 27, when No. 2 will play No. 3. The winner of that game will face the No. 1 team on March 1, and then "if needed" there will be a game on March 2 (but again, only if No. 1 loses the first game on 2/27).

In case you're interested in the league/section standings, as of last Friday, 2/16 (the last games played) the Oakland Section/League standings are:

Oakland Tech	9-0
Castlemont	7-2
McClymonds	4-5
Skyline	4-5
Oakland HS	3-6
Fremont	1-8

The interesting thing about these standings, and something we didn't ask Oakland Section Commission Jerry Luzar about is what will happen if there is a tie at No. 3 (which appears could happen unless McClymonds and Skyline are scheduled to face each other). . . a coin toss? A playoff game? Dart-throwing? They'll probably figure it out. . ..