Playoff time....Explain how your do it State does it

[so cal lurker]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

There are 13 Sections.
Following Sections, teams qualify for either NorCal or SoCal Regionals. At this stage the CIF central office takes over the tournament. It seeds the teams and makes the brackets. The winners of these brackets face each other in the State Finals, so each championship game is North v South. There are different levels for the schools to compete in: Open, D1, D2, D3, D4, D5, & D6. D6 may just end with the Regional Final and not have a State Final.

How divisions are done may be different in CA than most places (at least Southern Section). Rather than using size of schools, they use a Byzantine formula based on the performance of the basketball team over the past two years. It’s two-thirds last year, and one-third the year before that. Each win or loss during the season gets points based on the division of the opponent and the quartile of that opponent in the division. And then there are bonus points for playoff games, again depending on level of playoffs. My understanding is this was put in, along with the open division, as a reaction to transfers and schools recruiti, which made size less relevant than it once was. (The open division puls the top 8 teams, as decided by a committee, regardless of division.)