CCS boys, girls basketball playoffs: Five things we learned from seeding meeting
Familiar teams, new format
As it has done since 2013, the CCS placed its top teams in the Open Division. The Archbishop Mitty boys are back to defend their title. The Pinewood girls are back to defend theirs, too. Pinewood has appeared in seven consecutive Open finals, winning last June after five runner-up finishes to Mitty and one to Sacred Heart Cathedral. The Mitty boys are aiming for a sixth Open title and third in a row. But this season they’ll have to do it in a new format. Traditional win-and-advance brackets have been replaced by pool play. There are still eight teams in the division, but the teams are now separated into two pools of four. Each team will play the other three teams in its pool once, with the pool winners advancing to the championship game at Kaiser Arena in Santa Cruz on Feb. 25. “Hey, it’s a new challenge,” Mitty coach Tim Kennedy said after his boys team clinched the West Catholic Athletic League title last week. “It’s something new. It’s exciting. I don’t know what to think of it. I’ll wait till it comes out. We’re going to make the best of it. You’ve got to win to keep advancing.” Because every Open team qualifies for the NorCal regionals, teams that lost in the first round of the previous format played a consolation game in hopes of staying sharp while waiting for NorCals to begin. Now they won’t have to do that. “I will say that some of the feedback that we got from some of our member schools, especially from the teams that were maybe 6, 7 and 8 seeds perennially, was that they were sitting around, didn’t have a significant game after that first game,” CCS commissioner Dave Grissom said. “Especially on the girls’ side, when they were playing a couple of teams and there were some lopsided scores and I think some people had mixed feelings about consolation games. This is a playoff structure that they use down in Southern California and I think that our basketball committee just felt overwhelmingly that this was a step in a better direction for the overall well-being of the Open Division in general.”
- CCS basketball schedule: Boys, girls first-round games
Why Santa Cruz for Open finals?
Last spring, the top seeds in the CCS basketball playoffs hosted games through the finals, even in the Open Division. This season, the section has found a neutral site for its Open championship games that is equipped to handle larger crowds in a COVID climate. The Open finals, which traditionally have been the hottest ticket, are scheduled to be played on Feb. 25 at Kaiser Permanente Arena in Santa Cruz. “Three weeks ago we were going, ‘Holy smokes, are we going to have anybody at our games?’” Grissom said. “Now things are starting to open up and our kids are still playing. I think we’re giving them a better experience than we did a year ago. I’m excited that our kids get to play and I think it’s going to be a really positive experience for our student-athletes in the section.” The commissioner added, “Kaiser Permanente Arena is situated and they’ve done COVID vaccine checks and testing protocols with the Santa Cruz Warriors, so they’re prepared to do that for us. So it’s a little more seamless for us to do that one neutral site at Kaiser Permanente.”
How did an 8-16 team make the boys Open?
It’s not a surprise that the West Catholic Athletic League comprises nearly the entirety of entries in the boys’ Open Division. But why did Valley Christian, a team that lost 11 of its last 12 games, squeeze into the mix as the No. 8 seed? The Warriors (8-16) possess a WCAL résumé boosted by victory on the road against No. 7 seed Bellarmine, a home win over No. 5 seed Serra, an overtime loss against the Bells and an impressive-enough 54-50 loss at top-seeded Mitty in the regular-season finale. It was enough to get a vote of confidence over the rest of the candidates, who ended up as No. 1 seeds in the other brackets. D-I Carlmont (15-7); D-II Pioneer (17-7); D-III Santa Cruz (19-5); D-IV Palma (18-4); D-V Woodside Priory (13-11). “It’s not an application process,” Grissom said. “It’s seeded subjectively, and the conversations in the room were, ‘Who are the best eight teams in CCS?’ There was a pretty lively debate and conversation about who they were and I think it’s fair to say that the WCAL rep felt pretty strongly that Valley Christian belonged in that group. There was a lot of conversation about a specific player and whether that player would be eligible, but really it boils down to the teams and the overall body of their work. The reality is this, the WCAL is our best league and that’s not close, I think. And the committee felt like they were the eighth team.” The only non-WCAL team in the bracket is No. 2 seed Sacred Heart Prep (21-3), the outright West Bay Athletic League champion. While the Gators lost 59-51 to Bellarmine on Dec. 18, SHP defeated No. 6 St. Francis one day earlier and No. 3 Archbishop Riordan the previous week. “Those things spoke pretty highly about the quality of the team that they have,” Grissom said.
Pinewood’s only loss comes at a cost
More than three months ago, in only the third game of the regular season, Pinewood lost 59-54 at home to St. Ignatius. The Panthers (19-1) haven’t tasted defeat since, and a rematch against SI is scheduled for next Wednesday in San Francisco in Pool B of the girls’ Open Division. That’s because the Wildcats (16-7), in spite of back-to-back losses to close out their regular season, earned the No. 2 seed over Pinewood in large part to their head-to-head meeting. “That was certainly taken into account,” Grissom said. Meanwhile, the only public school teams that are guaranteed spots in the NorCal playoffs are No. 7 Palo Alto (20-2) and No. 8 Half Moon Bay (20-4) — champions in the Santa Clara Valley Athletic League and Peninsula Athletic League, respectively. “The reality is this, it’s done the same way as the boys,” Grissom said. “They put the body of work of all those teams up on the board and then they select who are the best eight teams.”
Winning records are not necessary
Eighteen boys and 13 girls teams will enter the playoffs with more losses than wins. To qualify, teams had to finish with at least a .500 record in non-league games or within their own league. The only undefeated team — KIPP, which went 10-0 — is the 10th and lowest seed in boys Division IV. There are four one-loss teams among the girls, led by Mitty’s 23-1. The others are Pinewood, Hillsdale and Harker.