Boys BB: Thoughts on Open Division

As the first of the major CIF section boys basketball championships are about to get going on Friday, here’s where we think we stand in terms of which teams in the north and which ones in the south will be going to the Open Division. A lot can still change depending on any upsets for Sunday’s eventual final decisions by the CIF.

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The most impactful decision that will be made by far this weekend by the CIF in terms of the Open Division regional/state boys basketball championships is whether expected CIF Central Section D1 champion St. Joseph of Santa Maria will be either in the north or in the south.

Sure, the Knights (30-1, No. 3 overall in this week’s Cal-Hi Sports State TOP 30 rankings) first have to avoid being upset in their section final on Saturday by Buchanan of Clovis. We also know the CIF top brass and the various section commissioners involved have already been talking about this situation for more than two weeks. It’s not as if they have their Sunday morning seeding meetings coming in from the cold. All angles/issues have been discussed at length.

By rule and as a member of the CIF Central Section, St. Joseph can be in either in the NorCal or SoCal regionals. The precedence in all CIF sports in recent years is that teams from the Fresno area of that section have been placed in the north while teams from the Bakersfield area have been placed in the south. The Knights have been mostly placed in the south due to Santa Maria’s closer location to some parts of Southern California, like the San Fernando Valley, than in just about all parts of Northern California. But two years ago, they were placed in the north and proceeded to hit the road for wins at Dougherty Valley of San Ramon and then Modesto Christian before falling in the CIF Open state finals to Harvard-Westlake of Studio City.

Structurally in the state as a whole, it continues to be reality and a difficult situation that the Open Division teams in the CIF Southern Section are so much stronger with more talented players than the rest of the state. Of the 10 teams that were in this year’s CIFSS Open Division pool play games, only St. Joseph, Archbishop Riordan of San Francisco (No. 5), Salesian of Richmond (No. 10) and De La Salle of Concord (No. 11) in the entire state are ranked among those 10 teams. Computer rankings that the CIF often goes by would have the differences even more pronounced because those 10 CIFSS Open teams are playing each other and hence their strength of schedule only goes up.

With the CIF having a desire not to completely replay the CIFSS Open playoffs — No. 1 Roosevelt of Eastvale and No. 2 Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks are playing on Saturday in the title game — and also having a noticeable dislike for having any teams in Santa Maria/Santa Barbara County hosting a regional final no matter what that team has done, we are going into the weekend thinking that if Roosevelt wins the CIFSS Open title and there is no upset by Buchanan, then St. Joe will be getting the No. 2 seed in the South for next week.

That’s not what we would prefer would happen, that would be St. Joe with the No. 1 seed in the north, but it’s what we think is going to happen. At least with a No. 2 seed in the south, the Knights would likely receive a first-round bye and then they’d have a home game for the regional semifinals against the winner of a matchup between the No. 3 seed (would be Notre Dame if it loses to Roosevelt) and the No. 6 seed (Montgomery of San Diego if it wins in the CIF San Diego Section Open final vs Carlsbad).

What happens if Notre Dame wins on Saturday vs Roosevelt? That changes it possibly by a lot. In that scenario, the Knights as the CIFSS Open champs take the No. 1 seed and the Mustangs fall to the No. 2. Does St. Joe then have to be the third seed? If that happens, then the CIF might have to think about the Knights hosting a first-round regional game vs Montgomery. Then again, the CIF also tries to give every CIF Open Division section champ a home game. So while Montgomery (or Carlsbad) would be behind all of the CIFSS Open teams in all rankings, it could host a CIFSS team regardless of seedings. Carlsbad had a home game in the SoCal Open division last season, St. Augustine did as well in 2023, but Saints had to play on the road as an SD Section Open champ in 2022.

It would frankly be ridiculous considering how much the CIF has been talking about travel for NorCal teams to Santa Maria for a San Diego team to go through L.A. traffic and go up to Santa Maria. That likely isn’t going to happen. Harvard-Westlake, the two-time defending CIF Open state champs and clearly the third team in line from the CIFSS Open teams, could then be elevated to third in the south (also with a higher computer ranking than St. Joe) and that drops the Knights even more. In that situation, it would be just one home game in the first round of the SoCal bracket (would probably be against St. John Bosco of Bellflower in a 4-5 matchup).

Head coach Tom Mott of St. Joseph has made it a goal to try to earn the No. 1 seed for the north in the Open Division. And why not? The Knights wouldn’t have to worry about playing perhaps as many as three CIFSS Open teams just to reach the state final. They instead would be at home for a couple of games. It’s similar to all of the teams in the NFL every year who are striving to get home field advantage for the AFC and NFC playoffs. A team’s odds of going to a championship are just a lot higher.

The league that the Knights play in and their CIF section to some degree pushes them down in computer rankings and we’re pretty sure if even one of the CIFSS Open teams has to travel to Santa Maria that there will be complaining. To us, however, it’s a situation that other than one game against a nationally ranked team from Florida, the Knights have met all that they’ve set out to do to get that NorCal No. 1 seed. They had wins against nationally ranked opponents — including Gibbs of Florida, Holy Innocents of Georgia and Orem of Utah — and they got wins on the road vs Salesian of Richmond, Modesto Christian and more.

Yes, teams going from the Bay Area or the Sacramento area to Santa Maria would be very hard. And there is no one who does NorCal rankings who includes the Central Section teams in the north. We don’t do regional rankings, but have always had the Central Section in the north and by rule since St. Joseph can be in the north it should be in the north, especially for this year.

The CIF tells us all the time during football playoffs about teams that have had to travel one year, then get to stay home for a regional final the next year. For St. Joseph, it not only took those trips two years ago to win the NorCal Open title, but last season the Knights hit the road twice in the SoCal Open playoffs, first to get a win at Sierra Canyon of Chatsworth and then taking a loss at Roosevelt. In the 2022 season, St. Joe traveled for the SoCal first round and lost at Harvard-Westlake and the year before that it had to travel again. It would appear that all the talk about teams not having to travel all the time just doesn’t apply to the St. Joseph boys.

This also isn’t a situation that comes up that often. This year’s team at St. Joseph is generational for that part of the state. And do we have to remind anyone that senior Tounde Yessofou of this team has become the state’s all-time career scoring leader? The CIF should definitely consider the possibilities of Tounde playing his final game for the Knights in a CIF Open Division state championship representing the north against one of the powerhouse teams from the south.

If St. Joseph were to be in the north, then it also probably happens that the CIF would have to take a fifth team from the CIFSS Open Division up into the SoCal Open bracket. That fifth team would be Sierra Canyon. There is no rule about the CIF only taking four teams to the SoCal Open from the CIFSS. The Trailblazers (22-7, No. 7 in the state) have been a bit up and down, but they did get one win in the Mission League over Notre Dame and they just lost by one point to Roosevelt. For competitive equity reasons, it’s a group that clearly belongs with those top four teams from the CIFSS Open Division (Roosevelt, Notre Dame, Harvard-Westlake & St. John Bosco). It’s not going to be a complete replay of the CIFSS Open in the SoCal Open, either. Harvard-Westlake & St. John Bosco actually have not played each other yet this season. Notre Dame and Roosevelt also are playing for the first time this week.

Looking at the rest of the possibilities for the NorCal Open Division, Riordan has been in a class by itself all season in the CIF Central Coast Section. Barring a major upset in the CCS Open final by St. Ignatius, the Crusaders are going to be the only NorCal Open team from that section. In the CIF North Coast Section, both Open finalists — Salesian and De La Salle — look headed for the NorCal Open. And in the Sac-Joaquin Section, the two-team scenario also looks solid after Modesto Christian topped Lincoln of Stockton and Folsom defeated Inderkum of Sacramento in Tuesday’s semifinals.

So what would be the sixth or perhaps seventh teams in a NorCal Open scenario? If St. Joe is in the north, it’s the top seed, has a bye (so one less team has to travel there) and a six-team bracket sets up nicely (Riordan with a bye and the two teams from the SJS and NCS cross-matching in the first round). If St. Joe is in the south, depending on margin of victory, Buchanan of Clovis could be the sixth team as a section runner-up. Lincoln is another possibility with an OT loss to Modesto Christian, two four-point losses to the Crusaders and a OT win vs San Ramon Valley. The Wolves would be the third NCS team for the NorCal Open (just lost to Salesian in NCS Open semis).

While the NorCal Open would still be quite competitive and produce a strong opponent for the south even with St. Joe not in it, putting the Knights in the north also would likely drop down teams like Lincoln, San Ramon Valley and Inderkum to the NorCal D1 bracket and would produce a stronger opponent for the south. In the D1 state finals in recent years, because of too many top NorCal teams being pushed up to the Open and not enough CIFSS Open teams being pushed up the Open, those games have been lopsided. It looks like competitive equity concerns only go so far.

In CIF pairings and seedings, there is often a conflict between what we think is going to happen and what we would like to see happen. All that can be done is try to explain all the possibilities and just hope for the best for all teams and players involved.

Mark Tennis is the co-founder and publisher of CalHiSports.com. He can be reached at markjtennis@gmail.com. Don’t forget to follow Mark on the Cal-Hi Sports Twitter handle: @CalHiSports