Mitty girls, Salesian boys at the fore

Let the fun and games begin — the basketball playoffs are finally here.

Every year, Metro teams do well, all the way to the state championship game. Over the past five seasons, 43 (23 boys, 20 girls) have reached the pinnacle game and 16 (eight boys, eight girls) have won it all.

Some of the more memorable runs for state crowns:

Eastside Prep-East Palo Alto girls claiming the first of backto-back crowns in 2016 with just six girls on its roster.

Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland girls, buoyed by four collegebound seniors (including McDonald’s All-American Oderah Chidom), won the Open Division crown in 2013. It was the only Open Division title won by a Metro girls team.

Two years later, the O’Dowd boys won an Open crown behind the play of Ivan Rabb and Paris Austin. Rabb hit a lastsecond free throw before a raucous crowd at Cal to beat Mater Dei-Santa Ana 65-64 in overtime. That was the only Metro boys team to win an Open crown.

The same year, the San Ramon Valley-Danville boys, behind first-year coach Brian Botteen, rolled through the Division 1 bracket and defeated a Chino Hills team featuring Lonzo and LiAngelo Ball to win the state crown at Cal.

And perhaps the most memorable run was by Mission boys in 2016-17, who became the first San Francisco Section team to win a state title while going 35-1 en route to a D3 crown and Metro No. 1 ranking.

So which teams will make the ultimate runs this season?

The Mitty girls (24-0), ranked No. 1 in the country, are the obvious choice. They feature two of the nation’s best players — junior wing Haley Jones ,a possible national player of the year, and Penn State-bound point guard Karisma Ortiz — and coach Sue Phillips was announced Monday as a Naismith National Coach of the Year nominee.

Mitty has one potential obstacle: six-time state champion Pinewood-Los Altos Hills (23-1). Mitty beat Pinewood 65-57 in last year’s CCS final. Pinewood is small, but perfectly balanced and is led by one of the state’s top coaches (Doc Scheppler) and 5-foot-11 junior Hannah Jump (16.4 ppg), who last week committed to Stanford.

Those two teams, plus national No. 5 St. Mary’s-Stockton, figure to vie for the Northern California Open regional title, though Salesian-Richmond, Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa and Miramonte-Orinda are all capable of upset bids.

The Salesian boys are 27-1 and No. 6 in MaxPreps’ national computer rankings. The Pride, led by Connecticut-bound James Akinjo, will have little resistance in the North Coast Section D3 playoffs. Only seven of the 14 teams have winning records.

Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland — favored ahead of Las LomasWalnut Creek in NCS D2 — and CCS Open top-seed Bellarmine appear to be the teams most likely to make a run at the Northern California Open Division crown.

The rest of the divisions are anyone’s guess because of the CIF’s competitive-equity model, which is new to Northern California but in its third year in Southern California.

In short, it works like this: All the teams that advance out of the section playoffs are placed into a regional pool (North and South) and are essentially seeded 1-88. The top eight teams go into the Open, the next 16 (9-24) are placed into D1, the next 16 (25-40) to D2 and so on to D5.

That means Division designation at the section level doesn’t matter. For instance, the University boys (26-2) are the top seed in the NCS D5 tournament. If the Red Devils prevail or even qualify for NorCals, they probably will be placed among the top 40 boys teams, meaning they could be placed in the D2 or D3 tournament at state.

The CIF said it will try to spread out the teams so one section does not dominate one bracket, but in its handbook states that “it is possible for more than half the bracket may be filled by one section depending on competitive equity placement.”

So if the placement is right, there could be a Metro team in the final of every division. It’s possible.