The CIF's Basketball Brackets Are Flawed. How Can We Fix Them?

Fixing the "competitive equity" system requires not only answers, but asking the right questions.

Sacred Heart Cathedral won a CCS championship, then was given a 15 seed in CIF Division II. Santa Cruz, who lost to SHC, is the 1 seed in Division III. | Ethan Kassel

An annual tradition in the world of California high school basketball played out on Sunday.

Refresh Twitter repeatedly, wait for CIF State Tournament brackets to come out, then complain about them once they’re released.

It’s a process that started long before the current “competitive equity” model was adopted for the 2018 playoffs, and it’ll likely continue no matter what format the state uses to organize its basketball championships.

Make no mistake, there are pitfalls within the current system. But instead of just complain about them, I’d like to take a more pragmatic approach. We need to look at the pros and cons of the current system, ask questions that will help improve the system and then suggest possible solutions to remedy the problems.

I’ve been asked before about how I’d fix the system, and there’s no one simple or short answer. But with the state tournament beginning tomorrow, there’s no better time to talk about it.

The Current System

Beginning with the 2018 playoffs, the CIF has used a “competitive equity” model for its basketball playoffs, and a similar one for other sports. Rather than placing schools into brackets based on enrollment, the top teams are placed in the Open Division, the next best teams in Division I, the next in Division II, and so on through Division V. Each section presents its teams in a list ranked from strongest to weakest, and the committee aggregates those lists and then ranks the teams in both the Northern and Southern regions.

This system was adopted to avoid blowouts, and it has achieved that goal. Compare any bracket from 2018 through 2023 to any bracket from 2017 or earlier, and the results, especially in early round games, are staggering. But there are problems, the biggest one centering around the arbitrary cutoffs between brackets and the fact that the system, in some cases, rewards teams for losing.

Under the prior system, which was far from perfect, teams advanced from section tournaments based on enrollment. If you qualified from the Division II tournament in your section, you were playing in Division II in the state tournament as well, unless you were one of the elite few picked for the Open Division. Here’s the catch: The CIF is a loose confederation of its 10 member sections, and those sections vary wildly in size, demographics and means of governance. The Southern Section is bigger than most states, while the San Francisco Section has just 18 schools. What’s considered a “smaller” school in the Southern Section would be enormous in the Northern Section, which consists of no population centers larger than Chico and Redding. Each section used its own enrollment cutoffs, and some adopted systems that moved teams up and down through divisions based on their successes or lack thereof. When Mission beat Villa Park in the 2017 Division III Championship, it was a school of less than 1,100 students triumphing over a school of more than 2,400. The representatives from the Oakland Section were automatically placed in Division I, even though McClymonds has under 500 students.

Not only did a system that was supposed to be based on enrollment use different cutoffs, it often led to massive blowouts. Nowhere was this more evident than in Division V, where small private schools rubbed elbows with rural public schools. That meant Sierra Canyon was in the same bracket as Kern Valley, from the small town of Lake Isabella.

With the competitive equity model, the CIF fixed its old problems while creating new ones. Blowouts were replaced by arbitrary cutoffs between brackets and the feeling that some teams were punished for winning while others were rewarded for losing.

Within the 2024 brackets, there are a few examples that illustrate this point. Perhaps none do so better than the case of Sacred Heart Cathedral and Santa Cruz. SHC beat Santa Cruz on Saturday in the CCS Division III Championship, 49-48. In turn, the Fightin’ Irish were ranked ahead of the Cardinals on the list that the CCS submitted for the state to rank.

So what’s SHC’s reward? The 15 seed in Division II and a trip to No. 2 Oakland Tech. The only way the Fightin’ Irish could play another home game is if they win three games and No. 16 Clovis East wins three games, setting up a 15 vs. 16 NorCal championship in San Francisco. Santa Cruz, meanwhile, is the top seed in Division III. By being ranked 39th in Northern California instead of 37th, the Cardinals are the favorites to play in a state championship game, and they’ll have home court advantage the entire way there.

That’s not a guarantee that the Irish will lose or that the Cardinals will win. Upsets are far more common under the current system than the old one, but those need to be taken with a grain of salt. If SHC is to beat Oakland Tech, it wouldn’t be like Princeton knocking off Arizona or St. Peter’s taking down Kentucky. SHC was ranked by the CIF as the No. 37 team in Northern California, while Oakland Tech is No. 24. The same would be true if Head-Royce, the 16 in Division III and the 54th team in Northern California, beats Santa Cruz.

The CIF’s line of thinking is that being placed in a higher division is akin to making the NCAA Tournament, while being in a lower division is like playing in the NIT. But unlike the college tournaments, the end result for all divisions in the CIF is the same: A chance to play at Golden 1 Center for a state championship. The teams in Division V don’t care if their banner says Division V on it. They just care that they’re hanging a banner.

Similarly, try telling a 16 seed that suffers a season-ending loss to a 1 seed that they should be happy that they were placed one spot higher and were in a more competitive bracket. Had that 16 seed been ranked one spot lower, they’d have a softer draw, home court throughout the playoffs and a much better chance of prolonging their season.

I’m all for teams playing the best competition possible. Iron sharpens iron. I fully support teams playing the best nonleague schedules they can and learning their strengths and weaknesses against the elite. But the difference between winning and losing in a December tournament is peanuts compared to the difference between winning and losing in the State Tournament. When the loser’s season is over, teams aren’t just looking to play the best team they can. The goal is to win, go to practice the next day and have another chance to take the court with your friends instead of turning in your gear.

The Questions

Now that we’ve identified the pros and cons of both systems that the CIF has employed, we need to identify what actually needs fixing within the system.

The most glaring problem is that the competitive equity model effectively punishes some teams for winning while rewarding other teams for losing. But that’s not all. Under the old system, there was an understanding that teams that won state championships were considered the best in their school size, even though school sizes varied by section. Now what does it mean if you win a state title?

If you win the Open Division, you are the true and undisputed state champion. But past that? Good luck explaining it. The team that wins the Division III Championship will be the winner out of the teams ranked 39 through 54 in Northern California and the teams ranked 39 through 54 in Southern California. And considering that some of the best teams don’t even make it through their section tournaments (see NCS Division 1 as an example within the Bay Area), the regional champions aren’t really number 39 in their region. Simply put, the system is completely arbitrary, and relies on separating teams based on cutoffs that are created without any sort of rhyme or reason.

The CIF needs to answer what constitutes being a Division I team, a Division II team, and so on. As of now, there is no definition or set criteria to be in any particular division.

Perhaps the most glaring case of this comes in Division V. In the pre-equity era, the bracket featured the likes of Sierra Canyon getting lined up against teams from rural towns. 2019 still had one small town representative in its state championship game, Mt. Shasta, but the Southern California representative was Foothill-Bakersfield. Mt. Shasta, a school of less than 300 students that brought its entire student body to Golden 1 Center, entered at 33-1. Foothill, a school of roughly 2,000, came in at 23-11, beat the Bears 78-66 and hung a state championship banner. Instead of rural public schools losing to elite private schools, they now lose to large public schools that ended up in a low division after an otherwise unremarkable season.

There have also been some inexplicable misseedings over the years as well. The 2023 Southern California representative in Division V was Lynwood, a team that featured Jason Crowe Jr., one of the best freshmen in the state. The school of 2,150 won all of its state tournament games by at least 22 points, and beat little Sierra of Tollhouse, a school of 375, 89-58 for the state title. Valencia had similar success in Division IV, winning its state tournament games by an average of 21.4, including an 89-59 championship game drubbing of Half Moon Bay. Valencia finished the year 47th in the state via the MaxPreps computer rankings, 12 spots ahead of Division III representative Buena.

The other colossal oversight in the competitive equity era came in 2022 when Chico power Pleasant Valley managed to slip down to Division III despite a 16-point win over Clovis West, who made the Open Division. The Vikings also lost in overtime to Granada, the 10th seed in Division I. When asked if his team was underseeded following a state championship victory, head coach Tim Keating answered that his school was a Division III school. Within the Northern Section, this was true. But in the world of competitive equity, it shouldn’t have been.

There’s also the matter of injuries affecting a team’s resume and placement. In the 2018-19 season, La Jolla Country Day played much of the season without Princeton commit Ryan Langborg, who has since won two NCAA Tournament games and transferred to Northwestern. That meant the Torreys had a resume worthy of placement in Division III, but with Langborg healthy, won their five games en route to a state title by an average of 19.8 points. Were they effectively rewarded for losing games while he was out injured?

So How Do We Fix This?

I’ll start with a disclaimer: There is no one perfect way to remedy all of this, not in a state as large and diverse as California. Just separating teams by school size doesn’t work for multiple reasons—what constitutes a large school in one part of the state is tiny in another, and not all schools of the same size are equal. A school of 2,000 that draws from a population of Spanish-speaking farmworkers is completely different than a school of 2,000 kids of Silicon Valley employees. Then there’s the issue of public versus private and the smallest schools consisting of tiny private schools that charge over $60,000 a year and public schools in mountain towns.

The first solution is to clearly define what gets merits placement in each division. The CIF does not have a set format for section tournaments, and even if it wanted to create one, it would be all but impossible considering the differences between the state’s sections. So a standardized section tournament format is basically out of the question. The CIF is going to have to continue working with the set of teams that each section qualifies through its tournaments.

One way to do this would be to use the same sort of model that the NCS has used in recent years, starting with school size and then moving teams up or down through divisions based on a a point system that values recent performance. In this format, which the NCS is ditching next year in favor of an equity-based system, a small powerhouse like Salesian has moved from Division 4 to Division 1, while Tennyson, a Division 2 school by enrollment, found itself in Division 5 after a lengthy playoff drought.

A system like this would prevent a powerhouse from slipping into a low division during a lean year. If a team like Mitty missed the CCS Open Division but qualified for the state tournament as the runner-up in CCS Division II, the Monarchs could find themselves somewhere like Division III or IV at the state level through the current system. Whether it’s done through an objective mathematical system or subjective analysis, scenarios like these need to be prevented.

That’s not to say situations like this didn’t occur under the prior system as well. In 2016, Serra was upset by Bellarmine in the CCS Open Division Semifinals. The Padres, who likely would have been in the CIF Open Division regardless of the outcome had they played in the CCS Championship Game against St. Francis, were instead seeded by enrollment in Division II, where they went on to win the state title.

The other glaring issue is that seedings within divisions are completely arbitrary. Under the pre-equity system, teams were seeded within divisions with consideration given to overall strength and results in their section tournaments. Now, teams just have to hope to be on the right side of the cutoff. Had Dublin been one spot lower, the Gaels would have the top seed in Division II. But because they were ranked 22nd, they’re headed down Highway 99 to Clovis North, the seventh-ranked Northern California team and the top squad not chosen for the Open Division.

The CIF needs to answer what constitutes a 1 seed, a 2 seed and so on. The difference between being a 1 and a 16 shouldn’t come down to being ranked 22nd or 23rd in the state. These seedings should be based, at least in part, on section tournament results instead of just ranking teams from top to bottom.

Section tournament results played a major part in seedings under the pre-equity system. Section champions could expect a first round home game, a reward for their successes and for their fans, who filled gyms still excited from the previous weekend’s triumph. Now there are section champions seeded 16th, such as Head-Royce in Division III. The Jayhawks were ranked 54th among the Northern California qualifiers. Lucky number 55 was Santa Teresa, who lost in the CCS Division I Semifinals and received one of the section’s three at-large bids. The Saints will have home court advantage throughout the Division IV playoffs.

One other option is to place teams in brackets like teams are selected for bowl games. Just as a bowl game might pit the third-place finisher in the Big Ten and the fourth-place finisher in the SEC, the winner of, say, Sac-Joaquin Section Division IV could automatically be placed in CIF Division III each year. This sort of format probably makes more sense within the CIF’s state football system, but it’s worth at least exploring.

I have maintained for years that every section champion should be at home in the first round. This cannot be done in the Open Division, where more than half of the field typically consists of section champs, but those teams are also rewarded by being in a smaller bracket that never features more than eight teams. Heck, you can take it one step further in most cases and also try to give any team that finishes with at least two wins in its section Open Division tournament gets a first round home game as well.

There are two ways to do this: Simply give section champions a top 8 seed in a 16-team bracket, or include a clause that every section champion hosts its first game ,regardless of seed. The NCS does this with league champions; in past years, No. 16 Vallejo hosted No. 1 San Ramon Valley, and this year, No. 4 Dougherty Valley paid a visit to No. 13 Mt. Eden. The CIF used to do the same; in 2013, No. 11 Mission hosted No. 6 Weston Ranch at Kezar Pavilion after winning the San Francisco Section. Under an ultra-condensed format where teams have barely 48 hours between receiving their seed and taking the court for their first game, section champs should at least be assured they’ll be playing at home to avoid having to make travel accommodations that could necessitate a trip of five or six hours in the most extreme cases.

Whether the CIF wants to adopt these specific adjustments or use some other means to achieve these goals, it requires one common practice: Don’t get married to the minutiae of computer rankings. The NCAA doesn’t seed its entire bracket directly off ordering all 68 teams. The 68 teams are ranked, but seedings are then adjusted to ensure teams from the same conference won’t meet until the Sweet 16. The CIF can use the same approach to remedy its brackets and ensure that a section champion doesn’t get stuck with a 16 seed while a semifinal loser gets rewarded with a 1 seed in a lower bracket.

The aforementioned solutions are simply rough ideas from an observer. While I’ve followed high school basketball closely since 2011, I lack the power to do more than voice my opinions to change a system that requires extensive committee research, meetings, debates and votes. But instead of just saying “this sucks,” I felt the time was right to at least sound off on the situation, provide some perspective on the pros and cons of the various systems the CIF has used, and provide some framework for solutions that could help create a better system, and I did all of that in a tidy 3,000 words.

Remember that no matter what system is adopted, someone is going to be unhappy with their seeding, and the CIF is tasked with governing an enormous and incredibly diverse state. If the powers that be choose to try to address the questions I’ve laid out and try to address the problems within the current system while maintaining its strengths, I believe the CIF can come up with a model that takes an incredibly complicated state and gives it the best possible playoff system. The state championships are a terrific yearly celebration of some of the nation’s finest players and teams, and they deserve to be conducted as well as possible.

Thank you for taking the time to read this lengthy essay on the state basketball championships, an event that I thoroughly enjoy and want to see run as well as possible. If this is your first time reading Bay Preps Insider, be sure to sign up for notifications on new articles, and if you’re reading this before noon on Feb. 27, click here to vote on which first round state tournament game you want me to cover!