Riordan honored its senior class before last night’s game and should be in line for one of the top three seeds in the CCS Open Division.
Courtesy of Marcus Edwards/Special to Prep2Prep
Prep2Prep CCS Boys Basketball Playoff Projections
UPDATED February 19, 2020
With the CCS seeding meeting held this afternoon, this will be the final stab at guessing how teams will be seeded in their divisions as league representatives are set to convene to fill out the brackets and set the stage for a week-and-a-half of thrilling action.
Each division will be broken down in its appropriate section, but one thing must be remembered: Leagues can only put one team up for seeding at a time in Divisions I-V. This can create a logjam effect if a better team finishes behind a lesser team in their league standings, because teams from other leagues could supersede that lesser team, leaving the better team waiting in the wings as well.
OPEN DIVISION:
With all three of Bellarmine, Mitty and Riordan sharing the WCAL championship, it’ll be up to the committee to decide matchups, and there are convincing arguments to be made in favor of all three teams with their non-league results.
“You could go with a coin flip if you want,” Mitty head coach Tim Kennedy said. “You look at everybody’s body of work, I don’t know if there’s a right answer.”
Menlo-Atherton is now projected as the fourth seed ahead of Serra by virtue of a win over Logan, a common opponent, though the only difference between being fourth and fifth is wearing the white jerseys and being designated as the “home” team in a neutral-site game.
With Carmel’s loss on Tuesday, the race for the eight Open spots has effectively shrunk to nine teams. St. Francis seems like a near lock at this point, while the final two should go to a mix of Menlo, Palo Alto and Sacred Heart Prep. Our projections side with the two teams from Valparaiso Avenue, though an argument can certainly be made for the Vikings, who went 13-1 in games that Jamir Shepard played in. However, that one loss is to a Leland team that finished in the BVAL Mt. Hamilton cellar, and while the Vikings played in a far deeper league than the Knights and Gators, both Menlo and SHP have stronger nonleague wins. The overall body of work, including those nonleague results, lead us to give the nod to the two from the WBAL.
DIVISION 1:
Unless Palo Alto gets pulled up to the Open Division, Division I will have all seven teams from the SCVAL De Anza. With Mountain View jumping into fourth place by beating Los Altos, the Spartans are now seeded ninth, with third-place Homestead eighth and the teams placed fifth through seventh filling seeds 10 through 12. Evergreen Valley has tiebreakers over Piedmont Hills in the BVAL Mt. Hamilton, so the Cougars will likely end up with the third seed.
If Palo Alto gets pulled up to the Open Division to join Bellarmine and Menlo-Atherton, there’ll be 18 teams going for 16 spots. North Salinas is certainly going to be left out, and San Benito is expected to be the other team to miss the cut.
DIVISION 2:
It looks like Division II will be a 15-team field as Gunn qualified while Branham and Lincoln finished a game shy of .500 league records. With Willow Glen and Leland’s recent slumps, the two have dropped down to the fifth and sixth seeds, with Woodside up to fourth by virtue of wins over Hillsdale and Burlingame, which trump any win the other two teams have aside from Leland’s victory over Palo Alto. The Rams will go on the board ahead of the Chargers, and their resume is certainly weaker than Woodside.
DIVISION 3:
The top three seeds in Division III are largely straightforward, as Aptos’ overall body of work has drowned out the negatives of an early loss to Sobrato. Monterey has a head-scratching nonleague loss to North Monterey County, but the Toreadores avenged their nonleague loss to Salinas by beating the Cowboys twice in league and have a nonleague win over Palma. Though the Chieftains ran them out of the gym twice in league play, that win still carries weight.
Past that, arguments could be made over seeds five through 12 in all sorts of directions. As tight as it is between Burlingame, Sobrato and Soquel, and though those three could go in just about any order, the Panthers currently have the nod for the fifth seed by virtue of close losses against three Open Division teams, something that the others can’t lay claim to. Jefferson and Saratoga holding the eighth and ninth seeds seems like a safe bet, but determining the last three seeded positions and who will play home games on Friday is a debate that could go on for hours. With Westmoor needing to be seeded ahead of El Camino by virtue of league tiebreakers, our projections currently have the Rams 11th and Colts 12th, leaving both North Monterey County and Pajaro Valley unseeded, along with the two BVAL West Valley teams.
DIVISION 4:
With Palma beating Carmel to sweep PCAL Gabilan play while both Menlo and Sacred Heart Prep took care of business in the WBAL, Division IV seems all but set. The only thing that could really change the field is if Palo Alto somehow edges one of the WBAL teams for the last Open spot, which would knock one of those teams into Division IV, move everyone else down one seed and jettison Latino College Prep from the field. Outside of that, the only spots that are really up for discussion are the eighth and ninth seeds with Harbor and Monte Vista Christian and who gets the 11th and 12th seeds. The only change in the Division IV projections in the last week is King City surpassing San Jose for the 12th seed and the associated changes to the unseeded teams to limit travel as much as possible.
DIVISION 5:
With Pacific Bay Christian’s PSAL Tournament Championship and Stevenson’s loss to Pacific Grove, our Division V bracket appears largely set. There could certainly be a good argument between Eastside and Stevenson for the second and third seeds, though.
