sb3

SoCal High School & Prep Report

S.B. Tourney: Limit--Four Games
to a Customer--(December 30, 1997)

Seems we were wrong when we said that under CIF Southern Section rules there was no limit to the number of games a team could play at a tournament (see our December 5 article on this subject).

The Santa Barbara Holiday Classic was evidently under the same impression we were, and scheduled it's tournament so that they would have the winners of each of the four pools meet today, Tuesday, December 30, 1997 in semifinal games, with the winners of each playoff meeting tonight for the Championship.

Try again.

Remember, this is a 16 team tournament field, and so, Section 1605.2 of the CIF Blue Book limits the amount of games in a 16-team tournament to four games, and the championship final would have exceeded that limit.

In addition, because the local Channel League teams playing in the tourney all were successful in their respective pools, it would have meant they would be playing each other just a few days before the actual league season begins Jan. 2, when they will all matchup again.

So the tournament has decided to switch today to what they're calling the "hardware round", meaning that all winning teams get trophies, and therefore the teams who regularly play each other will play other teams. And according to Santa Barbara's coach, Jeff Lavender, the tourney director, "since it's a Santa Barbara tournament, we're going to name all the games after famous Santa Barbara High athletes (who played basketball for the Dons). The Dos Pueblos game will be for the Randall Cunningham trophy. The San Marcos game is for the Don Ford trophy and the 8 o'clock game will be for the Jamaal Wilkes trophy."

So here's the schedule for the "hardware" round:

All the Championship games will be at Santa Barbara High:

Dos Pueblos High will play Desert Mountain of Arizona at 5.
San Marcos High will play Moorpark at 6:30.
Santa Barbara will play Cabrillo at 8.

In the consolation round "non-hardware" games, the following will be at Santa Barbara:

Righetti vs. Thousand Oaks (11th Place) at 12:30 pm
Bishop Diego vs. St. Joseph (9th Place) at 2:00 pm
Channel Islands vs. Burroughs (7th Place) at 3:30 pm

Some of the other "non-hardware" (i.e., consolation) games will be at San Marcos High:

Saugus vs. San Jose Academy (15th Place) at 12:00 pm
Santa Monica vs. El Modena (13th Place) at 1:30 pm