Santa Margarita is 22-3, seeded third in its division and will open the boys basketball playoffs by playing a wild-card round game – at Santa Paula, 118 miles from the Santa Margarita campus.
By contrast, Gabrielino of San Gabriel is 15-11 and unseeded in Division III-AA, the same division Santa Margarita is in, and will open the playoffs with a first-round home game.
Why? Because Gabrielino is a league champion and the No. 1 representative from the Mission Valley League, and Santa Margarita qualified as an at-large team. According to the rules that the CIF-Southern Section follows when making its playoff brackets, a No. 1 team always will get priority over an at-large team.
The oddity of a third-seeded team playing a wild-card round away game was part of Sunday’s release of CIF-SS boys basketball pairings and seedings for 10 divisions. Basketball playoff divisions are based on enrollment; the larger schools are grouped in Division I-AA, the next largest in I-A, and so on down to the smaller-enrollment schools in V-A.
Wild-card games will be played Wednesday. Most first-round games will be played Friday.
Santa Margarita and Servite had 3-3 records in the Serra League. They split their two meetings, so head-to-head results would not determine which would be the league’s No. 2 team and which would go as an at-large entry. A coin flip, after Santa Margarita’s victory Friday over St. John Bosco of Bellflower, went Servite’s way.
“I’ve never been lucky in Vegas or anything like that,” said Santa Margarita coach Jerry DeBusk, smiling. “When the coin hit the ground, it was rolling around, and I jumped out of the way of it. If I knew what was going to happen, I would have kicked it.”
Servite, though, as the No. 2 representative from the Serra League, has to open on the road, too – at Gabrielino in a III-AA first-round game Wednesday.
Serra champion Mater Dei is the top-seeded team in II-AA, which might be the toughest of the 10 boys basketball playoff division. Also in the division: Dominguez of Compton, ranked No. 6 in California; and Villa Park, No. 12 in the state. Mater Dei is No. 5 in California.
The only other Orange County team seeded No. 1 in its division was Los Alamitos, which is top-seeded in I-AA.