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D1-D2-D3 erupts to quarterfinals BayArea versus The Valley!! Predictions

D1
Clovis West at home versus Serra Serra by 3
St. Ignatius on the road at Granada Granada by 1
ABM at home versus Clayton Valley Charter Mitty by 7
Monterey Trail on the road at San Ramon Valley MT by 2

D2
Clovis East on the Road at Oakland Oakland by 5
Bishop O'Dowd at home versus Bellarmine BOD by 2
Menlo-Atherton on the road at Del Oro Del Oro by 6
Oakland Tech at home versus Jesuit OTech by 4

D3
Santa Cruz at home versus West Park SC by 1
Carmel on the road at Ygnacio Valley Carmel by the Sea by 5
Valley Christian at home versus Bullard VC by 8
San Joaquin Memorial on the road at Justin-Siena SJM by 3

A modest proposal -- well, two actually

First, the ideal: CIF reforms itself into four east-to-west sections. Then each section adopts the same rules (for start of practice, number of games, postseason seeding).

Each section sends its top four into NorCals and SoCals, except maybe the Open, which could be a maximum of 16 but whatever number seems right.

Then the seeding meeting would be a) streamlined and b) freer of intersectional politics (vote for my D3 boys team and I'll take care of your D2 girls).

The real world. There is no good system. Nothing will work perfectly. There will always be 16 seeds and 1 seeds, or schools that miss or make enrollment numbers by a few students.

1) Eliminate enrollment divisions entirely. The season begins as a blank slate.

2) Plus-.500 record in league or overall qualifies a team for sectional playoffs.

3) Sections have two committees, one for boys and for girls. They rank all qualifiers 1 to whatever using primarily body of work but factoring in power rankings (injuries, etc.) Each section has an Open division. (SF and Oakland are folded into CCS and NCS, respectively.) They submit a ranked list to the CIF committees.

4) There are four CIF committees: Boys and girls for NorCal, and boys and girls for SoCal. They meet twice: Once before the last week of the sectional playoffs to get a rough idea of the landscape, and hear about injuries, etc., and once on the traditional Sunday.

Teams are ranked solely by competitive equity. And 16 seeds are unlucky; 1 seeds are lucky. Nothing you can do ...
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DIV 2,3,4 Seedings

I was speaking with a coach the other day and he basically said based on the seeds in some of the divisions you don’t really know how good a team is or maybe. Basically it throws things off some. And based on last nights results it looks like 2,3, and 4 are all over.

DIV 2:
North has a 9 versus 5 and 6 versus 2 South has a 1 versus 12 and 14 versus 7

My crystal ball shows that all the teams in the south are 1st place teams in the respective leagues. But get this. Not all the teams they played to get there were.

The 12 seed beat the 5th seed who were 5th in their league. The 7 beat the 2 who were 3rd in their league.

The North although the seeds advanced are somewhat high the matchups were fairly equal.

DIV 3:

What’s crazy here is we have 8 versus 4 and 3 versus 7.

The 3 is Alemany who was second to last place in the powerful Mission League. They were 22-15 overall and 1-6 in league and they are the highest seed left. That would be nuts if they win state. I wonder what the worst overall and league record for state champions. I would think this has to be pretty close. 15 losses and most likely win state. And they will face a 26-9 or a 26-7 team.

Now I don’t recall many games these days but obviously I can pull one up really quick. But Riordans only state title, they were 30-3 and Centennial was 31-1. Of course that was based on the teams placed in divisions due to enrollment.

Before they strictly went to enrollment and we only had D1 thru D5 teams could play up hence why Jason Kidd won D1 titles. I believe the 1990 Riordan team bumped as well when they played Mater Dei.

DIV 4:

Now this one is a doozy.

North has a 8 versus 4 and a 14 versus 2
South has a 1 versus 13 and a 2 versus 14

Palo Alto is the 8th and they beat the 1 Santa Teresa easily. But what is odd is the ST played Kerman the 16 seed who was dead last in their league. Yet nobody else from their league made the tournament. Did that league commissioner ask who would like to play.

Now although they lost, Christopher was a 10 seed and 3rd in their league. Yet someway somehow Santa Teresa 2nd in their league is the 1 seed and Brandan 1st in their league is the 1 seed in D2. WTF. Is the commissioner of the Mt Hamilton League the one who makes the final decision. This is stupid.

As for the South 1st seed 18-14 3rd in league versus the 13th seed 17-15 and 2nd in league.

And the 2nd seed 19-10 2nd in league versus the 14th seed 14-18 3rd in league.

In closing do they have a bunch of ping pong balls like the nba draft and this is how some of this is decided. Out of 24 teams within the three divisions 11 are 5th or worse and 5 of those 11 are 12th or worse. Will be interesting to see what seeds are in the North and South Finals.
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Sacramento all city teams

Joe D at the bee will post his all city teams in a month or so but who do you have on your teams? I have :

Mvp: Brandon Gibson MT

First team
Pinnick Del Oro
Haupt jesuit
Valdez CC
Woodard Sheldon
Lavrenov Rocklin

Second team
Toure West Park
Hudson Inderkum
Epperson Jesuit
Rollins Franklin
Kelly MT

I imagine I am forgetting 1-2 obvious ones of the top of my head.
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Open Round 1

Tonight, we get two great Open Northern California Basketball games.

Branson at Clovis North:
So many possibilities with this showdown!! Branson defense will have to slow down the Amundsen Brothers tenacity.
Carr and Butler will have to do what St. Joseph found hard to do, make your shots. Bulls' road to the Open with wins over Clayton Valley Charter, loss to DLS, and a win over San Ramon Valley. They have played four of the 12 Open teams. Wins over Riordan, loss to (3 pt.) St. Joseph 1/15/24 and another close loss to Roosevelt of Eastvale. Branson 8-0 Marin County league have begun a new era as the boys from Ross are trying to be the Top dog. Clovis North 9-1 in Tri-Rivers
defeated Edison of Fresno, Bakersfield Christian, Clovis East and took down St. Joseph. Only two players on the roster are 6'6. The Broncos are at home and will have a packed house.

Going with Branson in a mild upset-63-60

Modesto Christian at De La Salle:
De La Salle will be at home to another sold-out packed frenzy on Winton drive. The Spartans last game versus the Crusaders was last March 4th in Modesto. The Crusaders held on to win a narrow victory 57-56. De La Salle who has Blair, Ricketts, Pelosi and a deep bench will make it very hard for the MC squad of Jones, Sykes, Washington, Johnson to get any runs or easy baskets. The Spartans have played a much stronger schedule this season, with wins over Branson and San Ramon Valley. Loss in the North Coast Open Section Championships to top seeded Salesian at Contra Costa College, 53-42. DLS strong all year in the toughest league in Nor-Cal 9-0. DLS is 3-2 in February. MC played with precaution early in the year as transfers became eligible after Christmas. MC although contested by Lincoln and St. Mary's of Stockton was able to go 11-0 in Tri-City action. MC will be the underdog.

Going with MC 61-52
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Seeding process?

Aside from the ludicrous assumption that a committee that covers the whole state could seed 28 brackets, boys and girls, with 200 or so teams, in seven hours, the CIF needs to reconsider their process.

If you look at the girls' D1 bracket, you see that the seven CCS teams were "seeded" so that they did not play each other in the first round, and it appears that the bracket was set so that if the seeds held, the top CCS teams would not meet in the second round. This decision made making a bracket even more difficult than it already is.

In an ideal world, the brackets would be determined by "true seeding," and if two schools from the same league played in the first round, so be it.

Obviously that was not the case, and I think the idea that the CCS teams had to be separated led to the weird seeding decisions. (Still no justification for McClatchy being 16, though ...)

On top of that, the CCS teams did not perform well. In the Los Gatos-Carondelet game, it did not appear Los Gatos was expecting Carondelet to press, but even if they had, the difference in strength and athleticism was apparent -- and Carondelet is not a particularly strong or athletic team compared to some other top teams.

In other brackets, CCS teams were upset as well, but I could be wrong about the section's overall performance. Regardless, true seeding would have helped, perhaps, in avoiding these early-round issues and creating a more competitive bracket.

I understand that no one wants to go to NorCals and play a team five miles down the road, but then again, no one wants to get blown out just to avoid a local-local game.

First Round Scores (February 27)

Division I

Clovis West beat Dublin 79-57
Serra beat Lincoln 63-61
St. Ignatius beat Rocklin 67-51
Granada beat Inderkum 58-53
Miutty beat Dougherty Valley 75-54
Clayton Valley Charter beat Sacred Heart Prep 63-50
Monterey Trail beat University 70-68
San Ramon Valley beat Vanden 67-64

Division II

Clovis East beat Branahm 78-69
Capital Christian-Oakland (no score)
Bellarmine beat Montgomery 49-41
Bishop O'Dowd beat Los Gatos 76-49
Menlo-Atherton beat Sacramento 70-64
Del Oro beat Half Moon Bay 60-55
Jesuit beat Benicia 54-53
Oakland Tech beat Sacred Heart Cathedral 71-43

Division III

Santa Cruz beat Head Royce 61-47
West Park beat Enterprise 63-49
Carmel beat Venture Academy 76-58
Ygnacio Valley-Pleasant Valley (no score)
Valley Christian beat Piedmont 72-43
Bullard beat Central Catholic 53-43
SJM beat Christian Brothers 66-59
Justin-Siena beat Ripon Christian 59-44

Division IV

Santa Teresa beat Kerman 79-76
Palo Alto beat Ripon 60-58
Foothill beat Urban
Union Mine beat University Prep 66-61
Monterey beat Sierra 67-51
Lincoln-Gridley (no score)
Christopher beat Weed 60-55
Natomas beat Menlo 62-61

Division V

Mt. Shasta beat McKinleyville 60-49
Summit Shasta beat Durham 61-40
International beat Bradshaw Christian 50-49
Oakwood-Caruthers (no score)
Colusa beat Fortune 56-30
Futures beat Orland 78-65
San Domenico beat Lowell 57-38

How do we fix the CIF system?

I articulated my thoughts on the CIF's format and its pros and cons in a lengthy piece on my own site, which I'm going to shamelessly promote here. I'd just copy and paste the whole thing here, but I don't think putting 3,000 words here would be ideal.

Basically, the following questions need to be answered:
-What makes a Division I team, a Division II team, etc.?
-What makes a team a 1 seed or a 16 seed?

Close games are great. Blowouts suck. Avoiding them is good. But doing so through arbitrary cutoffs isn't the solution.

Please read and give me your thoughts! Nitpick at the tiniest of details if I got anything right or wrong. Give examples that I made the mistake of omitting! Let's have a fun discussion and try to create some real solutions here.

NorCal Playoff Predictions

Open: Salesian. Pride haven't won an Open Division game which is crazy to think about. But I think they get it done this year.

D1: San Ramon Valley. EBAL has been the area's top league and they get a NorCal title

D2: Bishop O'Dowd. Could see this bracket going a number of ways, but like the path for the Dragons

D3: Ygnacio Valley.

D4: Natomas

D5: San Domenico

NorCal Playoff Predictons

With games starting tonight, here are my quick picks on the winners:

Open: Mitty. Overwhelming favorite, but think they might get some pushes if they aren't full strength

D1: Carondelet. Pretty wide open field. Not calling it, but wouldn't be surprised if McClatchy beats Pinewood in round 1

D2: Oakland Tech. Seedings are pretty wonky in this bracket. Bottom half of the bracket looks much tougher

D3: Central. Lot of Central Section teams in this bracket. Grant could go on a run too

D4: St. Bernard's. I'll go with the top seed and teams having to travel up there.

D5: Lynrbook. Their schedule will pay dividends in this lower division
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