ELITE...FIVE? OPEN BRACKETS BOTH SHORT
Lack of ‘good teams’ puts Saints, Torreys in five-team brackets
After Sunday’s state basketball pairings were announced, St. Augustine High School boys basketball coach Mike Haupt had a question.
“Why are there only five teams in an eight-team Open Division bracket?” Haupt asked.
Monday, CIF San Diego Section Commissioner Joe Heinz had some answers to why only Corona Centennial, Bellflower St. John Bosco, Studio City Harvard-Westlake, Valencia West Ranch and St. Augustine are in the Open Division playoffs.
“The selection committee felt there weren’t enough good teams to fill the Open brackets … both in the boys and girls,” Heinz said. “If the committee had filled out the boys bracket, it would have included seven Southern Section teams and St. Augustine.
“So it would have been a repeat of the Southern Section playoffs.”
The Southern Section runs its Open Division playoffs differently. Instead of a 16-team bracket, the Southern Section runs two eightteam, round-robin pools.
Centennial (29-3), ranked No. 2 in the state by MaxPreps, went 3-0 in its pool while Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (22-10), ranked No. 7 and Torrance Bishop Montgomery (26-4), ranked No. 11, went 2-1. Chatsworth Sierra Canyon, ranked No. 11, was 0-3.
In the other bracket, Harvard-Westlake (30-2), ranked No. 1, St. John Bosco (26-6), ranked No. 5, and West Ranch (29-2), ranked No. 3, were 2-1. Playa del Rey St. Bernard (21-8), ranked No. 25, was 0-3.
St. Augustine (27-4) is ranked No. 6 in the state.
The Los Angeles City Section’s top teams are Woodland Hills Taft and Los Angeles Fairfax, which are the final two seeds in Division I.
“From the San Diego Section’s perspective, not having eight teams in the Open Division, trickled down to Division
I,” Heinz said. “We have six teams in Division I and none have home games.
“If three teams in Division I had gone up to the Open (probably Notre Dame, Bishop Montgomery and Sierra Canyon), Montgomery, Carlsbad and San Ysidro might have had home games.”
So instead, St. Augustine hosts West Ranch on Wednesday while Centennial, St. John Bosco and Harvard-Westlake have byes into the semifinals.
On the girls side, Sierra Canyon (30-0) is seeded No. 1 while San Diego Section champion La Jolla Country Day (28-3) is No. 2.
Both have byes in an eight-team bracket that has only five teams, including Rancho Cucamonga Etiwanda (29-3), Santa Ana Mater Dei (28-3) and Newport Beach Sage Hills (21-9).
“Our section has 18 teams in the Regionals, the Southern Section has 44,” Heinz said. “So there are a lot of unique pieces when the committee seeds.”