valley top 10

This week, the LA Times came out with their first season "rankings" from the Valley Region basketball writers (who we're guessing were Eric Sondheimer, Paige Leach, and Jon Ortega). You all know how we feel about rankings, but hey, some people like them. Since the Daily News has yet to come out with their own poll, (hey Vince, time to pick some teams), we thought it would be fun to do our own side-by-side comparison with the Times. Hey, don't take this stuff too seriously; it's just another opinion.

But we do think that the Times and others place way too much emphasis on the "large" (i.e., Southern Section D-I, D-II, D-III and 4A City schools) and not enough on some of the the smaller ones who will never play these other schools except perhaps in a single tournament game or an exhibition. We're talking about the schools who are in Divisions IV or V in Southern Section, or some of the City 3A schools who will be competing for the "Divisional" title at the end of the year, rather than the City Championship. All of the schools shown in the LA Times poll are either in Divisions I, II, or III in Southern Section, or in 4A in City Section. So we're doing two polls, just for fun. In our Division IV and V Southern Section/ Division 3A City Section Valley poll, we're just going to list the schools from the Valley region not in any particular order, but simply a "top 10". It's still way too early in the season to start assigning numerical rankings for most of these teams, and until things start to shake out, who really knows.

Polls mean nothing. Game is everything. But just for fun, we'll tell you what we think.

LA Times Poll D-I, II & III/4A Top 10l	SoCalHoops D-I, II, III/4A Top 10	SoCalHoops Small School Top 10
1 Simi Valley (Marmonte) 2 Chaminade (Mission) 3 Sylmar (East Valley) 4 Harvard-Westlake (Mission) 5 Cleveland (West Valley) 6 Valencia (Foothill) 7 Santa Clara (Frontier)(D-V) 8 Newbury Park (Marmonte) 9 Notre Dame (Mission) 10 Grant (East Valley)	1. Simi Valley 2. Chaminade 3. Sylmar 4. Grant 5. Camarillo 6. Cleveland 7. Harvard-Westlake 8. Newbury Park 9. Notre Dame 10. Chatsworth	Santa Clara (Frontier) Montclair Prep (Delphic) Buckley (Liberty) Providence (Liberty) Milken (Westside) Calabasas (Frontier) Bell-Jeff (Santa Fe) Campbell Hall (Delphic) Crespi (Mission) Oakwood (Liberty)

Here's the Times' girls' poll for the Valley. We don't have a clue about the girls' teams, so we won't even venture a guess on our end as to who should be included and who shouldn't.

1 Buena (Channel)
2 Channel Islands (Pacific View)
3 Ventura (Channel)
4 Crescenta Valley (Pacific)
5 North Hollywood (East Valley)
6 Alemany (Mission)
7 Harvard-Westlake (Mission)
8 Moorpark (Marmonte)
9 Canyon (Foothill)
10 Glendale (Pacific)