Darren Sabedra of the San Jose Mercury-News has done some homework on teams that will likely qualify – or not qualify – for this year’s CIF Central Coast Section Open Division heading into the final week of the regular season in the CCS.
According to his calculations using a CCS point system, if Serra of San Mateo (7-2) does not win on Saturday against Archbishop Mitty of San Jose (9-0), the Padres will most likely not be in the CCS Open Division and instead would be competing in the CCS Division I playoffs.
Conversely, if Serra were to beat Mitty and make it into the Open Division, that result plus others would then likely drop out Wilcox of Santa Clara (8-1) from the Open Division and then instead Division I.
The bottom line for those who have been following the Division II North bowl game rankings for several weeks is that once the CCS playoff pairings are out on Sunday, we can almost guarantee that there is going to be at least one CCS team that will immediately become a favorite to land a NorCal bowl bid.
If that team is Serra (which has wins over Bellarmine and Valley Christian and lost by just 21-14 to De La Salle), even a loss to Mitty isn’t going to prevent the Padres from moving to the top of the charts as a D2 North bowl game pick.
If that team is Wilcox, the Chargers would obviously immediately jump past Manteca in the D2 North bowl game rankings due to a head-to-head win. Whether Wilcox would go in front of Clayton Valley of Concord, Casa Grande of Petaluma, Enterprise of Redding or Inderkum of Sacramento would be a different question.
The reason for the CCS Open Division being so messy is that Bellarmine of San Jose (7-3) appears likely to be in it due to a points system that the CCS uses to seed teams and place teams in the Open Division. It wouldn’t matter that Serra would have a head-to-head win over the Bells. The points are what matters.
We have mentioned all season in the CIF D2 North bowl rankings that the addition of CCS teams once that section’s playoff pairings are out could greatly impact the order. This is because the CCS teams that are not in its own Open Division would drop down into divisions that are considered Division II or lower for the bowl games by the CIF and not Division I. And until those pairings come out, we consider all CCS teams that have a shot at being in the CCS Open Division to be Division I for our bowl rankings and not Division II.
For more on this situation, view Darren Sabedra’s blog post at the San Jose Mercury-News. CLICK HERE.
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“the Padres will most likely not be in the CCS Open Division and instead would be competing in the CCS Division I playoffs.
Conversely, if Serra were to beat Mitty and make it into the Open Division, that result plus others would then likely drop out Wilcox of Santa Clara (8-1) from the Open Division and then instead Division I.”
Correction, Serra or Wilcox would be playing in the CCS Div 2 playoffs if they do not make the open.
That may be true and I’ll fix for future writeups but it doesn’t make a difference whether it’s D2 or D1 in the CCS because both of those divisional winners would be eligible for the D2 North bowl game.
What about Saint Francis?
Bottom line is we really have to see how all the CCS pairings shake out. If St. Francis isn’t in the Open Division, yes, they would be a contender for a D2 bowl game as well.