SoCalHoops High School News

CIF SS Playoffs: CIF Switcheroo Results
In Potential Bonehead Bracket--(Feb. 18, 1999)

Somebody who just read our article on the CIF SS decision to switch the Division V-AA Wild Card "C" and "B" games (which switched Campbell Hall v. St. Margarets and Desert v. Woodcrest Christian, pointed out something very interesting. Here's what our astute reader pointed out:

"The change of wild card b and c changes Desert's seed to 8 and Campbell Hall's seed to 5. The CIF takes an easy solution to their original mistake without thinking what else might be effected. The change actually sets up a quarter final of  #1 Poly vs. # 5 Campbell Hall and #8 Desert vs #4 Calvery Chapel Downey."

Yes it does.  But then if the CIF Seeding committee really knew anything about some of these teams, Campbell Hall wouldn't have been playing a wild card game to begin with.  But that's what you get when you look solely at league standings.  Yet another reason to go to an "Indiana" solution, or something akin to the NCAA field of 64, where overall records (a sort of RPI) which also takes into account games against ranked teams, against league opponents, and the like, are really used.  Again, all the CIF has to do is take all the teams in a division, and look at their overall records, determine how many teams they want in a pool, and rank them from 1 to # whatever.  If there are too many teams with winning records, then create wild-card games.  But there should never we repeat never be a situation where there is a team with an overall winning record that doesn't get to make the playoffs.

Our reader is quite correct, and while there are several variables still left to be determined (like the first and second round games), it's quite possible that the result predicted by him could be obtained.  Below is the upper portion only of the D-V-AA bracket.  The possiblity of a very poor quarterfinal now exists. Oh well. Maybe it won't happen; who knows, it could only be worse.

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