Bella Harmon (5) has been top player at new No. 19 St. Joseph of Lakewood. The Jesters have qualified for the CIFSS Open Division. Photo: sj.jestersbasketball / Instagram.com.
We start out this week with an intro to the CIF Southern Section Open Division playoffs, which will be 12 teams this season. Two of the 12 will be done for the season when the section playoffs are done even though those two teams will be vastly superior to many other teams moving on to the regionals in lesser competitive equity divisions. For this week’s rankings, the top five is the same, but it changes after that with Clovis High’s big win vs Clovis West plus a big move up for previous No. 26 St. Joseph of Lakewood.
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CIFSS Open Playoff Primer:
This is the week during the high school basketball season in California that the CIF Southern Section takes a week off between the February 4 conclusion of league and regular season action and its upcoming CIF
Southern Section championships. It begins on February 12. However, many of the other CIF sections in the state are still in regular season play.
As for the CIFSS, there is little doubt its Open Division is the top playoff division anywhere in the country with five of the MaxPreps national Top 25 teams in the field.
Several weeks ago, it was decided by the CIFSS that the Open Division would be expanded to anywhere from 10 to 16 teams, and many coaches and followers on social media were asking us what we thought. So, in talks with Cal-Hi Sports Boys Basketball guru Ronnie Flores, we decided it would likely be 12 since that would make the most sense, with the combining of pool play games with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals.
The 12 teams will be divided into pools of three teams each. The caveat is unlike years past when all teams advanced to the CIF Southern Regionals, only the quarterfinalists will be guaranteed to be moving on, and the remaining four teams will compete in play-in games on the same day of the quarterfinals for two additional spots, meaning this year 10 CIFSS Open Division teams will move on the state tournament. Last year on the boys side there were 10 teams and two teams didn’t advance that were decided by computer ranking. At least this year the two teams that don’t move on will have lost a game on the court not get the season ended by a computer formula. Many teams obviously in the CIFSS D1 or D2 playoffs going to the regionals probably will have lost games to Open Division teams that won’t be advancing.
The first six CIFSS Open Division teams pretty much mirror out our rankings with one minor exception. As for the other divisions, we see things a little differently to start in Division I but over the next week and beyond things will shake themselves out on the court, and that is the way it should be.
CAL-HI SPORTS UPDATED TOP 30
GIRLS BASKETBALL STATE RANKINGS
(Preseason rating in parentheses; through some reported games of Saturday, Feb. 7; This is the 45th consecutive season that CalHiSports.com is providing girls basketball state rankings)
(*Forfeits not included)
