Fryer on boys basketball: All about the playoffs
A rundown of playoff information for boys basketball:
• Villa Park coach Kevin Reynolds offered his team this challenge when the Spartans were 2-5 in the Century League: Either finish among the top four teams in the league to earn one of the league's four guaranteed playoff berths, or forget about the playoffs because Villa Park would not apply for an at-large berth. Villa Park finished strong, won its final five league games and ended up in fourth place in one of the county's more entertaining leagues, a league in which Villa Park beat league co-champion Foothill twice, and last-place El Modena beat Villa Park.
• The CIF-SS playoffs have 12 divisions of 32-team brackets. First-round games are Wednesday in these divisions: 3AAA; 3AA; 3A; 4AA; 4A; 5AA; 5A; and 6. First-round games are Friday in these divisions: 1AA; 1A; 2AA; and 2A.
• This year there are three divisions within Division 3 – 3AAA, 3AA and 3A – and only one in Division 6, which is Division 6.
• Ticket prices for CIF-SS basketball playoff games: $8 for adults and $5 for students with valid student identification and for children 13 and younger.
• The CIF-Southern Section sends eight teams into each of the CIF State's five divisions. CIF-SS Division 1AA and 1A teams go to State Division 1; CIF-SS Division 2AA and 2A teams go to State Division 2; CIF-SS Division 3AAA, 3AA and 3A teams go to State Division 3; CIF-SS Division 4AA and 4A teams go to State Division 4; and CIF-SS Division 5AA, 5A and 6 teams go to State Division 5.
• The CIF State tournament begins with the CIF Southern California Regionals, the qualifying tournament for the state finals. Regionals preliminaries are March 7, 10 and 13, with the Southern California Regionals finals on March 17 at Citizen's Business Bank in Ontario and at Colony High of Ontario. State championship games are March 23 and 24 at Power Balance Pavilion (formerly Arco Arena) in Sacramento.
• CIF-SS Division 1AA semifinals – two boys games and two girls games – are at Anaheim Convention Center on Feb. 28. CIF-SS finals, Feb. 29-March 3, in most divisions will be at Anaheim Convention Center. A few other finals, mostly in the lower divisions, will be at Mater Dei.
• Semifinal games no longer are at alternate court sites, which were defined as courts at which the home team has not practiced. (Mater Dei, for example, usually used Ocean View as its alternate court site when it was the home team for a semifinal.) Semifinal games now are at the home teams' gyms.
• The worst record of a CIF-SS playoff team: Hawthorne, at 3-23. Riding an 11-game losing streak, Hawthorne plays at San Marcos in the first round of Division 3A on Wednesday.
• One team that finished the regular season with a .500 record is among the top four-seeded entrants in its division: Kilpatrick of Malibu (11-11) is the No. 4 seed in 5A.
• Only 10 teams in Division 3AA finished high enough in their leagues' final standings to receive guaranteed playoff berths. The division has 19 teams that got into the playoffs as at-large qualifiers. If none of those 19 teams would have submitted at-large berth requests, then 3AA would have been a 10-team bracket.
• Coaches have referred to Division 4AA as "The Division of Death" because it has so many outstanding teams for a lower division. Four teams in 4AA are in the CalHiSports state top 20: Serra of Gardena, which is No. 11 in the state rankings; No. 12 Price of Los Angeles; No. 15 Bishop Montgomery of Torrance; and No. 18 La Verne Lutheran. The only other CIF-SS division with four teams in the state top 20 is 1AA, with No. 1 Mater Dei, No. 2 Long Beach Poly, No. 4 Etiwanda and No. 10 Loyola of Los Angeles.
• Mater Dei has won league championships in 29 of Gary McKnight's 30 seasons coaching the Monarchs. In the 1987-88 season, Mater Dei finished second to Bishop Amat of La Puente in the Angelus League, with that first loss to the Lancers ending a Mater Dei 59-game winning streak. Mater Dei got its revenge, though, by beating Bishop Amat in the CIF-SS Division 5A championship game back in the days when 5A was the section's top division.
