playoff division III

Where's Waldo III: The Division III
Playoff Pool List Of Schools--(Jan. 26, 1999)

Hey, we're about three weeks away before teams will actually get their playoff spots. Some will continue on; some will call it a season and go home. How will you know in which division your favorite team will be competing come playoff time? By reading SoCalHoops, that's how (but you knew that was the answer all along). In anticipation of the playoffs though, and to take some of the mystery out of it, we're posting up the 1998-99 CIF SS Boys' Basketball Division lists. That way you'll know where your team is going to be playing. . . or at least what other teams they're likely to play.

Now Division III is sort of strange. In fact III and IV are odd, really odd. Both of these divisions have only about a third as many teams as are in Divisions I and II. Division III features schools with enrollments ranging from 750-1124 (and those are uniform enrollments for the Division across the state). Southern Section breaks it down further into the "AA" (950-1124) and "A" (750-949).

Now these divisions are small. Very small. And that's what makes them so odd. D-IIIAA has only 23 teams in it, and two of those are "playing up"--Serra, which has an enrollment of only 275 which would place it in D-VAA, and Silver Valley with an enrollment of 380, which would put it normally in IV-A, have both "moved up" this year.

Division III-A, should really just be called the "Mission-Almont-Northern" League. There are only 20 teams in the entire division, which should make for a fairly interesting playoff, since great batches of these teams also play each other during the regular season.

Teams we'd expect to see make the playoffs in DIIIAA are Serra, Alemany, Bishop Montgomery, Pomona, and a couple of others, but we'd expect to see a war between Serra and Bishop Montgomery, a possible rematch of their game at the adidas Double Pump Hoops Challenge played on Saturday, Jan. 16 at Cal State Dominguez Hills.

In III-A, Chaminade, the defending champion is still strong, but so is Santa Ynez, and even Harvard-Westlake looks good compared to the rest of the competition. Don't count out Azusa or Cabrillo/Lompoc or maybe even Nordhoff with just recently beat Santa Clara. But it's not really a stellar group, compared to some of the other divisions, and really anyone could take this assuming even half these teams make the playoffs. Oh, and we're willing to bet that with a 16 team playoff pool, there will be more than a few teams with losing records in this division.

Division III-AA	Division III-A
Serra Silver Valley Alemany Bishop Montgomery Brawley Cabrillo/Long Beach Chaparral Covina Gabrielino Ganesha Gladstone La Canada La Quinta/Westminster Monrovia Pioneer San Dimas Santa Paula Servite South Hills South Pasadena Western Workman	Azusa Banning Bassett Blair Cabrillo/Lompoc Chaminade Corona del Mar Costa Mesa Estancia Harvard-Westlake Morningside Nordhoff Northview Notre Dame Sherman Oaks San Jacinto San Marino Santa Ynez South El Monte St. Francis Yucca Valley