OK.
I know you’ve been waiting for this but it isn’t going to be etched into granite.
I can’t give you a team-by-team Pac-5 playoff projections this early Saturday morning, because the Trinity League (for slots 1-3) and South Coast League (to break a second-place deadlock between Mission Viejo and San Clemente) will conduct coin flips at more reasonable hours this morning to determine their playoff representatives’ pecking order.
And Friday night’s results certainly messed with a lot of what seemed to be solid bracket projections beforehand.
Crespi upsetting Notre Dame (which seemed a lock for the overall No. 2 seed behind Poly), Tesoro beating host Mission Viejo to win the South Coast League outright and Bishop Amat upsetting Loyola in the Serra League (eliminating Loyola from at-large consideration and, seemingly, allowing Santa Margarita to grab the extra Pac-5 bid in its place) all impacted most projected brackets.
So, with a little fiddling, here is how I see things unfolding Sunday morning at the CIF Southern Section’s office in Los Alamitos when the Pac-5 pairings are unveiled:
UPPER BRACKET
No. 1 Poly (Moore 1) vs. Santa Margarita (Trinity WC)
No. 8 Notre Dame (Serra 2/was ranked No. 2 in the division last week) vs. Newport Harbor (Sunset 3)
No. 5 Edison (Sunset 1) vs. Compton (Moore 3)
No. 4 Trinity No. 2 (Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran or Servite) vs. South Coast No. 2 (Mission Viejo or San Clemente)
LOWER BRACKET
No. 3 Crespi (Serra 1) vs. Millikan (Moore 4)
No. 6 Tesoro (South Coast 1) vs. Trinity 3 (Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran or Servite)
No. 7 Esperanza (Sunset 2) vs. Lakewood (Moore 2)
No. 2 Trinity 1 (Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran or Servite) vs. South Coast 3 (Mission Viejo or San Clemente)
Notes:
To refresh you on the Southern Section’s bracketing “rules”, 1) Teams from the same league can’t meet until the semifinals; 2) the Nos. 1 and 2 teams from a league must be put in opposite sides of the bracket; 3) teams in the same league must be seeded in the playoffs based upon the way they were seeded in their league.
Why does 5-4 Santa Margarita get the at-large bid over 7-3 Los Alamitos (Sunset League)? Based on the CIF Southern Section’s selection criteria, the Eagles have the edge based on vastly superior strength of schedule and the fact that the football advisory rates the Trinity League over the Sunset League – as, rightfully, it should.
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