SoCalHoops High School News

Where's Waldo? Southern Section
Playoff Division List For D-I --(Jan 22, 1999)

Ever try to predict where a school is going to be playing during playoffs?  It's not easy.  First there's league records. The SCIBCA (Southern California Interscholastic Basketball Coaches Association) puts out a weekly poll, which is supposedly based on league records in the various divisions.  It's on the basis of these league records and, in part,  the rankings by the SCIBCA coaches that the playoff pairings  are established. 

League records are only half the equation.  The other half is determined by "Divisions." Leagues mean nothing except the right to enter the playoffs;  in terms of which division a school is playing in come the middle of February, league matchups don't mean a thing because the leagues often-times mix schools from differing divisions.  Which division a school ultimately plays in during the playoffs is largely (with a few exceptions) based on enrollment figures as of the first of the year.

We managed to get the CIF Southern Section playoff Divisional lists.  "Division I"  (as a broad category) has schools with enrollments of more than 1500 as of January 6, 1999.  It is generally considered the toughest and "best" division, because theoretically, the schools in this division have the largest student population pools to draw from, and thus are thought to be more "competitive" than say, a team from Division IV (enorllments of 300 to 749) or Division V (enrollments of 300 and below The division is further broken down into D-IA (1500 to 1760) and into D-IAA, which is for 1760 and above. Here's the list for these two divisions.  Where a school has moved up a division from the one they would otherwise be playing in by enrollment figures alone (that is, they've successfully petitioned the Southern Section to play "up" in a larger division, against generally tougher competition) , we've noted it with an asterisk.  And obviously, the only school to have moved up this year into the largest division is Artesia, which has moved up from II-A.  Several schools, including Simi have had declining enrollment, and they've moved down a notch into D-IA.

So it looks like Simi won't be matching up against Artesia again until perhaps the State Tournament.  Simi will however be looking straight at Mater Dei and Glendora, and if we had to guess right now, we'd say it would be one of these three teams which will win the final in the Division. But then the league season for each of these teams is only half over, and it's way too early to start making predictions like that.   Other contenders include J.W. North, Pacific, Santa Barbara, and perhaps a couple of others, but Simi, Glendora and Mater Dei are clearly a step above the rest.

In D-IAA Artesia, Long Beach Poly, Long Beach Jordan, and Upland are the teams that stand out right now, but then again, it's still way too early to tell, but we're going to go out on a limb and predict that these teams will be among the final 8 in the playoffs.  Count on it.

Here's the list:  

©Copyright 1998 All rights reserved
Questions? Comments? Need Information?
E-mail: jegesq@socalhoops.com