Prep spotlight: Why EBAL basketball playoffs have shrunk to four teams
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EBAL: NEW LOOK FOR LEAGUE TOURNAMENT
There has been more parity in the East Bay Athletic League’s boys basketball season than maybe ever before.
While De La Salle has separated itself as the league’s top team so far, the rest of the nine schools have been jumbled somewhere in the middle, fighting for wins to get into the league tournament at the end of the season.
They have to battle this season because only the top four teams will qualify.
In previous years, every team participated in the league’s postseason with games stretching across four days.
In a season that has had so much parity, a 10-team bracket would have added more suspense to the already drama-packed regular season. But slimming down the tournament to just four teams makes regular season games that much more important.
“What we want to do is obviously determine who is the best in the East Bay Athletic League. Given our schedule, this tournament allows us to determine that,” EBAL commissioner and De La Salle athletic director Leo Lopoz said. “One thing you don’t want to do when you have a league championship is you do not want to just desert or not take into account the other nine regular season games. This really does make you play all nine games to earn a spot.”
In previous years, the grind of the nearly week-long tournament caused some teams to play multiple games over a short time period. Lopoz said fatigue came into play when deciding whether to implement a four-team playoff.
With the league still wide open, the race to the top four has been heating up.
“We got to find a way to find our way in,” Dougherty Valley coach Mike Hansen said.
If the league tournament started today, De La Salle would be the top seed, followed by Amador Valley, Dougherty Valley and San Ramon Valley. The first round of the league playoffs will start on Feb. 10, with the league championship game taking place three days later.
– Nathan Canilao
NOTRE DAME-SJ FLAG FOOTBALL STAR CHASES COLLEGE DREAM
For most high school athletes, their career ends after their senior season.
This is especially true for flag football players. After all, the sport is in its infancy, and college programs are sparse.
But they aren’t nonexistent. For one senior at Notre Dame-San Jose, an opportunity has emerged to play at the next level.
NDSJ linebacker Melia Morales told the Bay Area News Group she received a scholarship offer from University of Redlands, a small Division III school located in the Inland Empire in Southern California.
Redlands started its program in last February and is playing its second season this year.
“Originally, I had no offers, and I didn’t really think about the next level,” Morales said. “I didn’t know if it was an option for me or not. But then Redlands came to my school, and the ambassador said that I should really try and reach out to her. So I did it, and then she immediately asked if she could call me. We had a couple conversations, and then the second week of December, I was invited on an official visit, and that’s when she told me she would give me the offer, and I could be able to play next year if I wanted to.”
Morales is keeping her options open, but the chance to play in college will be hard to pass up.
“A lot of colleges are up and coming with flag football,” she said. “USC and UCLA just got a team, but Redlands was the only one in California that’s taking recruits right now. So I’m just looking around. I’ve emailed a couple other schools. I’m waiting until all that settles down, and all my college acceptances and college season’s kind of over, and then I’ll make my choice. But Redlands, honestly, it felt like home to me, and I really did enjoy being there.”
If she commits, she’ll be one of the first of many future college flag football players from the Bay Area.
– Christian Babcock
MACDONALD: CODERA COMES FULL CIRCLE AS WEDEMEYER COACH
As a graduated senior and soon-to-be freshman at Foothill College, MacDonald coach Burt Codera played in the Charlie Wedemeyer Santa Clara County All-Star Football Game in the summer of 2004.
Flash forward just over two decades, and MacDonald’s head man is now in charge of one of the teams. Codera, who is in his fourth year at MacDonald, will coach the North team in the game, which will be played as the second half of a doubleheader at 5 p.m. on Saturday at Los Gatos High.
“It’s an honor,” Codera said. “This senior class of my MacDonald kids are the group that helped me build the program from scratch starting freshman year. And you got to see part of our struggles and part of the build. We went through trials, tribulations, and then we found some success here this last year, going 9-1.
“These are five of the core guys that were with me through the thick and through the thin. So being able to coach them one last time with all my coaches, it’s just a cool experience.”
Codera’s MacDonald staff will join him on the sideline for the 51st annual game, which is renowned for both honoring Wedemeyer’s memory and the opportunity it provides former rivals to team up and represent their high school one last time.
“It’s just a cool experience to be able to compete with the guys that you’ve played against every day,” Codera said. “And then we had started training for junior college at that time. So we had some teammates from junior college that were in the game, and it was just super competitive. Fun, high-energy environment.”
– Christian Babcock
MONTA VISTA HOSTS SHOWCASE ON NATIONAL GIRLS, WOMEN IN SPORTS DAY
On Monday night, Monta Vista High will mark its ninth annual celebration of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.
The national day of recognition is Wednesday, but Monta Vista is aligning its commemoration with the varsity girls basketball and girls soccer games played on campus that day.
The school said in a news release that it will be making an extra effort to celebrate the work of its girls’ sports teams on campus that day and has invited all of its sports programs to attend, as well as youth groups and teams at all middle schools.
Monta Vista is offering free admission to any students (high school, middle and elementary) who would like to attend the game that night and show their support for the athletes.
There will be a T-shirt giveaway for those in attendance as well as performances from the Matadors’ cheer squad. More information about National Girls and Women in Sports Day can be found here.
– Christian Babcock
ST. JOSEPH-SANTA MARIA: NORTH? SOUTH? WHO KNOWS?
St. Joseph-Santa Maria has been a Central Section powerhouse for the past decade.
But since the Knights are in a geographical bind being one of the southernmost Central Section teams, the same question comes up near every postseason: Will St. Joseph be placed in the North or the South for the state playoffs?
Coach Tom Mott doesn’t know.
“I think everybody always talks about it, but nobody ever knows any reason why we go north or why we go south,” Mott said. “I ask the CIF, ‘How’s your bracket legitimate if no one knows what bracket they’ll be placed in at the end of the year?’ They’re reasoning to me that if you’re south of Bakersfield then you’ll go to the South. But that doesn’t make sense because we were in the North two years ago. There’s no rhyme or reason. And I wish that they would come up with a little stronger criteria.”
Should the Knights be put in the North this year, they would be the favorites to represent NorCal in the state Open Division championship in Sacramento. St. Joseph beat Salesian, NorCal’s top team, in a close win at the Crush in the Valley showcase on Saturday.
But if CIF will follow recent precedent, there is a good chance that Bay Area teams won’t have to play St. Joseph in the regionals as the Knights have been placed in the South for the last two seasons.
“We just felt that the area that they are coming from, it makes more sense for them to play in the South than it does to play in the North,” CIF associate executive director Brian Seymour told the Bay Area News Group last season. “We (placed them in the North) before and it was a lot of time on the road for a lot of those teams. It just makes more sense we do that with almost every single one our section teams in the Central and try to divide them up geographically whenever possible.”
– Nathan Canilao