The PAL had more than one team last year, and is typically the only public school league that has had two teams on the board for consideration for the open. Typically it's been some combination of Burlingame, Half Moon Bay, M-A, and Sequoia. The PAL is a very large public school league, and traditionally Burlingame and HMB have been much better than this year. Not surprising IMO.
6 of the 8 teams are set - Bellarmine, SI, Mitty, St. Francis, Serra, Palma
I don't envy the people choosing 2 out of 3 between Sequoia, M-A, or Palo Alto. Sequoia is not a lock and it's quite possible they don't make it in. The problem are the head to heads and common opponents (key criteria in selection). Sequoia is 2-1 against M-A, but lost to Carlmont who Palo Alto drilled. Sequoia was not a league champion but a league tournament winner. M-A is 2-2 against Sequoia/PA and is the PAL South Champion. Palo Alto only has the loss to M-A (could make the argument if we played M-A 3 times like Sequoia we could've been 2-1 also), but has a much stronger resume than Sequoia and was a league champion.
How do you differentiate between them? M-A played a difficult schedule as did Palo Alto...Sequoia did not. Sequoia's only quality wins are the two wins over M-A whereas M-A and Palo Alto played multiple games against open teams. In the end I think M-A and Palo Alto have to get in over Sequoia based on their resumes. M-A gets seeded ahead of PA because of head to head win, and over Palma due to their win over HMB and Palma's loss to HMB earlier in the year. Bracket would be something like -
1. Bellarmine
2. SI
3. Mitty
4. Menlo-Atherton
5. St. Francis
6. Palma
7. Serra
8. Palo Alto