Bracket seedings anger coaches
Vanden boys, which won a section title, start on road as No. 15 seed
The Vanden High boys basketball team, along with the St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School girls and Benicia High boys teams were all thrilled to win section titles this past week.
A big part of that happiness died down on Sunday afternoon.
Two of the three teams — section champions all — were put into higher divisions for the state tournament, leaving all three with first-round road games. St. Pat's moved up two divisions — going to Division II in the NorCals after winning a Division IV title.
Fresh off winning a Division II Sac-Joaquin Section boys title, Vanden Head Coach Micheal Holloway asked for the people in charge of the NorCal brackets to “do better.” Vanden was given the No. 15 seed in the Division I bracket and will play at San Ramon Valley on Tuesday at 7 p.m.
“Teams are being rewarded for losing,” Holloway said on Twitter. “SMH (shaking my head) … we get y'all can't make everyone happy, but sheesh.”
Holloway spoke with the Vacaville Reporter on Monday and said he couldn't say his full response to seeing the brackets for the first time because it was inappropriate, but said he felt bad for his players.
“They deserve to play in front of their peers, their parents, grandparents in a setting where they wouldn't have to travel,” Holloway said. “They earned the right to play at home by winning their league, winning their division and section.”
“What they are doing is rewarding teams for losing,” Holloway continued. “They're telling us it's better to lose in the second round of the section playoffs. We have a strong preseason and play games in Southern California and Nevada and all over the place
against tough teams. We don't run away from anyone, but it seems like they (the committee) is not rewarding that. It makes no sense and it tells me that the system is broken. Hopefully they can look into this for next year.”
Despite the road game, the Vanden coach said he's still optimistic.
“One — what's done is done,” Holloway said. “Two — We'll play anyone and three, we're just as talented as anyone. I'd take my guys over any team and I still think we'll have the best player on the court on Tuesday.”
Upon seeing that her Bruins were moved up two divisions to play on the road at Colfax on Tuesday, St. Pat's head coach Nadine Walker wasn't pleased.
“I was very, very upset about it,” Walker said. “I know dissecting the tournament is very hard, but they are punishing us for winning some major games. They're using us to fill the higher divisions and have fuller games. I don't know who is on the committee, but they are punishing the smaller schools.”
In the competitive-equity model the California Interscholastic Federation uses for seeding, teams are ranked from top to bottom and then divided into divisions, with the top 5-8 going into the Open, the next 16 in Division I and on down the line through Division V.
CIF associate executive
director Brian Seymour, speaking to the Bay Area News Group on Sunday, defended the process.
“You look at the body of work of the entire season and you trust the commissioners, too, looking at it and saying, `This is why this team is where they're at. It could be all kinds of different circumstances,” Seymour said. “It could be from an eligibility standpoint. It could be from injury. It could be from a sitout period. You take all those things into it. There are enough people on the committee who have been doing this for a long time that they realize what's a
good team and where they should be.”
Walker said that St. Pat's current enrollment is 321 students, a low amount when compared to other schools in the Division II bracket that have approximately 1,000 students.
“I think the rule should be that you're not allowed to be moved up or down more than one division,” Walker said. “We can go to Division III or down to V, or even stay at Division IV, anything else is too much.”
Benicia, the newly crowned North Coast Division II champs, will stay in Division II but will be the No. 10 seed and start on the road at Jesuit. That game is slated for 7 p.m. on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the Vanden High girls team, which lost the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II title to Whitney, will play San Domenico in the first round of the NorCal Division II bracket. San Domenico won the North Coast Section Division V tournament over the weekend, but moved up three divisions to play as the No. 15 seed against the Vikings.
The Will C. Wood High girls team, which didn't make the section championship in Division III, was moved down two divisions to Division V and will be the No. 3 seed. The Wildcats will host Lowell on Tuesday night at 7 p.m.
Once again, in the eyes of the bracket's critics, the winner of the section tournament is being punished while the loser of a section title game is getting rewarded.
“Feel for all those section champions that get bumped up to a higher division and “rewarded” with a road game in the regional playoffs,” Escalon High basketball said in a Tweet. “Competitive equity is a joke and always has been.”
Jordan Georgeson, a sports reporter for Gold Country Media chimed in on Twitter: “Once again, you would be better off losing in the section semis than making it to the championship or winning the section.”