CIF’s new state hoops tourney has Open wounds
T
he phrase “competitive equity” gets bandied about a lot by the California Interscholastic Federation and its 10 governing sections. It seems to be THE most important piece of criteria each time a section re-aligns its leagues. And yet it doesn’t appear it commanded the same importance on March 3 — when the 10 section commissioners gathered to draw up the state championship basketball tournament. Why involve competitive equity in THAT? This is the first year of the CIF’s new Open Division of the state basketball tournament. The theory behind its creation was to pull out the eight best NorCal teams, and eight best SoCal teams, regardless of division, and place them in an elite tournament while the other five divisions played out as normal. All eight spots in the bracket did not have to be filled in the invitation-only field. Byes could be awarded to the top two seeds. The plan was muddled with confusing criteria to determine Open Division eligibility — so much so that some programs weren’t entirely sure if they would be considered for the elite field or not — and the execution of it seemed worse. Just ask the Brookside Christian-Stockton girls. The defending Division V state champions are a very respectable 27-4 and won their Sac-Joaquin Section final with extreme ease on March 1. However, they are not ranked among the Top 20 girls teams in the state by CalHiSports.com. But on March 8 the Knights will play their first state tournament game against Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland, the No. 12 team in the nation according to MaxPreps.com. This is the same Bishop O’Dowd team which defeated Brookside Christian by 31 points (70-39) at a showcase event on Jan. 19. And it could’ve been worse had the Dragons not sat their stars late in the game. Brookside Christian played two other teams which made the Open Division draw: St. Mary’s-Berkeley, which beat the Knights by 19 (71-52) on Jan. 26, and Sacramento, which topped them by 16 (58-42) in early December. It’s hard for us to look at those scores — along with Brookside’s fourth loss of the season, a 66-38 defeat to a St. Ignatius-San Francisco team which is a top seed in Div. II — and say the Knights belong in this field. They do not. And maybe they don’t belong in Div. V, either, as several eyesore-like blowouts during the regular season suggest. But we still would’ve liked to hear the rationale for their inclusion in the Open Division. There was plenty more outcry about how the Open Division altered the state tournament as a whole. It wasn’t just in Northern California. There were boys and girls programs in the bottom half of the state left confused and frustrated as well. “It is a joke,” St. John Bosco-Bellflower boys coach Derrick Taylor told Eric Sondheimer of the Los Angeles Times after his team was selected for the Open Division. “Criteria means nothing. They originally said we didn’t meet the criteria to be in the Open Division. They had no idea how to do this. They should have scrapped the whole thing.” The CIF didn’t necessarily help itself by choosing not to have a post-selection press conference, something it’s done in the past after choosing state championship bowl game participants in football. Here’s what I find funny. We’ve been headed in this direction with the state basketball tournament since 2004. That was the first year the CIF stopped allowing teams to petition-up in divisions for state championship sports. Why not rescind that rule? Let Brookside Christian play up to Division IV or III where they would be challenged, but not over-matched. Let the Bishop O’Dowd girls — who won their Div. III state championship last year 62-24 — to petition up to Division I. Put a rule in place that necessitates a one-year, one-division bump for any school winning back-to-back regional titles. This doesn’t seem hard. ✪ 6
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