CIF State Playoffs

I got ya papa, that’s how they populate the divisions, it just does not make sense to me. So a school has a good class or two and they jump up. The school population does not change, and when that strong group of classes graduates. It’s a seesaw worse than before.
(Southern Section) I think that the points structure for W-L-T results and the 25/75 relative weighting for the last two seasons were designed to avoid extreme sensitivity (seesawing) in ranking movements. Maybe a project I'll take on with some Excel spreadsheet work.
 
My impression from reading various posts on SocalSoccer in recent years is that current season results are factored into the SDS power rankings. Is this correct? If so, it contrasts with the Southern Section approach which relies solely on the two previous seasons.

San Diego Section Power Rankings are based on current year results, but the arithmetic includes the Division of the opponent, which can make a difference of 4 points out of 34 to 50 possible.
 
How did Santiago Corona Women's soccer stay in the top 4 this year--they are the only D1 school in their league and couldn't get a victory vs D3 Centennial or D3 Roosevelt, that is four games, and they finished in second place in league. Sure they should be in D1 but as a fourth seed, what a joke. IMO, Troy HS should have been in the top 4, at least they won their league.
 
How did Santiago Corona Women's soccer stay in the top 4 this year--they are the only D1 school in their league and couldn't get a victory vs D3 Centennial or D3 Roosevelt, that is four games, and they finished in second place in league. Sure they should be in D1 but as a fourth seed, what a joke. IMO, Troy HS should have been in the top 4, at least they won their league.

Just curious where you're seeing the seeding? Because I'm assuming that the 4 teams that have a bye are seeded higher, which would put Santiago Corona lower than that. But maybe that team did better in pre-season against stronger teams?

Of course even using pre-season results can be dicey. I know our team lost to some teams early in pre-season. The unknown factor was that almost half the starters were missing those games because of CRL and some of the "gaps" were filled by JV players.
 
Just curious where you're seeing the seeding? Because I'm assuming that the 4 teams that have a bye are seeded higher, which would put Santiago Corona lower than that. But maybe that team did better in pre-season against stronger teams?

Of course even using pre-season results can be dicey. I know our team lost to some teams early in pre-season. The unknown factor was that almost half the starters were missing those games because of CRL and some of the "gaps" were filled by JV players.
On CIF website, look at the last poll and that will show you the seeding for the top 10. As for byes, who knows. Usually you don't see two byes in the same quadrant.
 
How did Santiago Corona Women's soccer stay in the top 4 this year--they are the only D1 school in their league and couldn't get a victory vs D3 Centennial or D3 Roosevelt, that is four games, and they finished in second place in league. Sure they should be in D1 but as a fourth seed, what a joke. IMO, Troy HS should have been in the top 4, at least they won their league.
I think you're misreading the bracket. If you look at the CIF soccer playoff bulletin example for how they construct the brackets you will see that Hart, #1 in their league, is the 4th seed and playing an At-Large team.
 
How did Santiago Corona Women's soccer stay in the top 4 this year--they are the only D1 school in their league and couldn't get a victory vs D3 Centennial or D3 Roosevelt, that is four games, and they finished in second place in league. Sure they should be in D1 but as a fourth seed, what a joke. IMO, Troy HS should have been in the top 4, at least they won their league.
They got the 4th seed because they are ranked 4th by the advisory committee at the end of the regular season (essentially a coaches poll I believe). While they didn't win their league, I think they likely stayed #4 because they started the season well and only lost one game (to the #2 seed in D1). Are they the 4th best in D1? I guess we will see. I don't see how Troy deserve the #4 seed though. They lost to a D3 and D4 opponent this year (and to a couple of D2 opponents), so I don't see how they would deserve the higher seed given your argument against Santiago Corona (actually, S/C didn't lose to any D3/D4 opponents, they tied those games). Seems like Troy got a pretty favorable spot in the bracket though, even if they weren't seeded.
 
I think you're misreading the bracket. If you look at the CIF soccer playoff bulletin example for how they construct the brackets you will see that Hart, #1 in their league, is the 4th seed and playing an At-Large team.
I am pretty sure Santiago is the 4th seed based upon the final poll. The bigger question is how did Aliso get a bye in the first round as an unseeded team when the 4 seed has to play in the first round.
 
Santiago was given the 4th seed and probably shouldn't have been but not necessarily for the reasons you listed. If you put a premium on winning your league championship in order to be a seed, then no, Santiago should have been moved down. However, CIF allowed for them to get the seed based on the final poll but then decided that because they were a 2nd place team from their league that they couldn't have a bye over a non seeded league champ in same division for first round. As such, that is why J Serra was also bypassed for the "bye" as the #5 ranked team (also came in 2nd from their league) and it fell to Aliso Niguel, the next highest ranked team (6th) based on final poll that was a league champ. All that said, it would've made more sense to just move Aliso to the 4th seed and slide Santiago down and then everything would have looked right. I think there's a problem with the playoff bracketing language and placement in that it hasn't been updated to address any potential issues (such as a second place team in league getting a top four seed), and that divisions are now based on competitive equity where leagues now have multiple divisions represented verses in the past, all league teams represented the same division...

As to how Santiago stayed in the top 4 I'd assume it was based on their body of work as fotos4u2 suggested, and not just their league? Schedule looks competitive with some good results against quality teams with quality wins of their own and their only loss coming to an undefeated Upland team. Centennial is only in Div 3 because of their past two years worth of results which were not favorable. Clearly, they're a much improved team this year (anyone can see that by looking at their results and #4 seed) which indicates they'll more than likely move up to Div 2 next year which is a more accurate portrayal of their current talent level and is a good reason why they were able to play Santiago to not one but two draws. Also, Roosevelt is Div 2 not 3 so not being able to "get a victory" is still not a loss and really not as big of a deal as what I think you want to make it. I think most would agree that in league play, crazy things happen....rivalries, history, a bounce here, a bounce there, injuries, familiarity with each other, or any other combination of factors is what makes league play so unpredictable and fun for almost any league, Sometimes it just doesn't go the way it "should" based on rankings, rosters, records, overall talent level, division placement etc....however, congrats to both Centennial and Roosevelt on not losing to Santiago (if that's something to be celebrated) and yet again to Centennial on being able to beat Roosevelt, which is what ultimately allowed them to win league.

Troy is good, a quality side with enough talent to make a run but coming out of the freeway league as a champion doesn't exactly mean they should be the fourth seed. But then again, having a personal connection to Troy might make you biased...J Serra (a 2nd place team from league), Aliso Niguel, La Mirada are all better options IMO.
 
As @twoclubpapa explains, in the Southern Section (not SD), at the beginning of the year (September), the CIF puts all the schools into their respective "Divisions" (not based on population, but the previous 2 years performance). Here is the document for this year for boys: https://cifss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Boys-Soccer-Power-Rankings-2017-2018-Web.pdf. Key take aways:

Schools are put into divisions and ranked:
  1. Based upon a two-year weighted power point total. The 2016 season was given a 25% weighted value and the 2017 season was given a 75% weighted value.
  2. Strength of the regular season results and playoff performance results over the last two seasons.
  3. Regular season matches and playoff opponents are weighted based upon the strength of the opponent and the division they were previously placed in.
Note, @fotos4u2 and others ... only the "regular season and playoffs" count. Preseason is ignored for good reason (teams are playing outside their divisions and CRL and league may impact team makeup).

Now that we have the teams in Divisions and Tiered them, we play the season. Over the course of the Season, the Boys or Girls CIF SS Soccer Advisory Committee then ranks the teams in each of the divisions throughout the year and finally publishes its "Final" Top 10 Poll - See, https://cifss.org/rankings/2-5-2018-boys-soccer-polls/

When it comes to "byes" and who-plays-who, the Top 10 poll plays a part, as did league finishing. The goal being to provide some intelligence to the process and not look strictly at records. Teams that won their league AND appear on the Top 10 poll are likely to get "wild card" teams, whereas, teams the came in 2nd may not get the wild card teams (unless they were also in the Top 10), it all depends on how things shape up.

My personal belief is that 2 year weighted for boys is probably very accurate. Girls could be 3 or 4 years, but 5 is to much. I know nothing about CIF SD (except that its below the northern border checkpoint in Oceanside and Temecula and they used to have a professional football team there that moved to the CIF-SS.
 
MWN and Soccer1019, you both make good points and explain the situation extremely well. My dd is a freshman this year and I have not dealt with CIF since I played way back when. My question is, is this a better system then the way it used to be done with individual leagues populating the same divisions?
 
I think you're misreading the bracket. If you look at the CIF soccer playoff bulletin example for how they construct the brackets you will see that Hart, #1 in their league, is the 4th seed and playing an At-Large team.
Maybe, but my experience has been that CIF will do a final ranking of teams and use that for the seeding of the tournament/playoffs. You will see that the 1-4 seeds will play the 29-32 seeds, and usually be the teams that get the byes. With 3 byes listed, even the at-large team would be #29.
Santiago was given the 4th seed and probably shouldn't have been but not necessarily for the reasons you listed. If you put a premium on winning your league championship in order to be a seed, then no, Santiago should have been moved down. However, CIF allowed for them to get the seed based on the final poll but then decided that because they were a 2nd place team from their league that they couldn't have a bye over a non seeded league champ in same division for first round. As such, that is why J Serra was also bypassed for the "bye" as the #5 ranked team (also came in 2nd from their league) and it fell to Aliso Niguel, the next highest ranked team (6th) based on final poll that was a league champ. All that said, it would've made more sense to just move Aliso to the 4th seed and slide Santiago down and then everything would have looked right. I think there's a problem with the playoff bracketing language and placement in that it hasn't been updated to address any potential issues (such as a second place team in league getting a top four seed), and that divisions are now based on competitive equity where leagues now have multiple divisions represented verses in the past, all league teams represented the same division...

As to how Santiago stayed in the top 4 I'd assume it was based on their body of work as fotos4u2 suggested, and not just their league? Schedule looks competitive with some good results against quality teams with quality wins of their own and their only loss coming to an undefeated Upland team. Centennial is only in Div 3 because of their past two years worth of results which were not favorable. Clearly, they're a much improved team this year (anyone can see that by looking at their results and #4 seed) which indicates they'll more than likely move up to Div 2 next year which is a more accurate portrayal of their current talent level and is a good reason why they were able to play Santiago to not one but two draws. Also, Roosevelt is Div 2 not 3 so not being able to "get a victory" is still not a loss and really not as big of a deal as what I think you want to make it. I think most would agree that in league play, crazy things happen....rivalries, history, a bounce here, a bounce there, injuries, familiarity with each other, or any other combination of factors is what makes league play so unpredictable and fun for almost any league, Sometimes it just doesn't go the way it "should" based on rankings, rosters, records, overall talent level, division placement etc....however, congrats to both Centennial and Roosevelt on not losing to Santiago (if that's something to be celebrated) and yet again to Centennial on being able to beat Roosevelt, which is what ultimately allowed them to win league.

Troy is good, a quality side with enough talent to make a run but coming out of the freeway league as a champion doesn't exactly mean they should be the fourth seed. But then again, having a personal connection to Troy might make you biased...J Serra (a 2nd place team from league), Aliso Niguel, La Mirada are all better options IMO.
Yeah, Troy's biggest enemy is their league. My kiddo graduated last year when they made it to the quarters and barely lost to Mater Dei, 1-0. I am always hopeful that they will get more love than they have in the past. Oh well.
 
When it comes to playoffs, CIF only goes so far as to "seed" and then place 1/4 in the top bracket and 2/3 in the bottom. After that, there aren't any seeds as it's virtually impossible to do a "true" seed all the way up to 32...What happens next is they place the league champions into the bracket...next are the second place teams and then the 3rd (4th if any), and finally at large or wild card winners...the system is designed to make sure a 1 (league champ) is matched up with a 3 (or 4 or WC or AL team) and to then try and match second place teams with second place teams for the first round...another factor is to avoid having league teams play each other in the first or second round....all of that makes sense with the old format of each league having ALL teams be in same division but now with competitive equity in place, I think the process and procedures need an overhaul....

I think CIF could easily accomplish as close to a true seed (1-32) if they used the Maxpreps rankings....all they need to do is the following:

A. Make sure that maxpreps has all teams classified in proper division for the year (yes, I know they still had multiple teams in the wrong division this year but I believe that has to do with the coach or whomever is setting up the maxpreps account for each team to establish the proper division for your team first)

B. Make it a rule that ALL teams in ALL divisions have to have their games accurately input for ALL games prior to new school week, so before Monday morning.

C. Maxpreps releases an updated "ranking" every Tuesday and Friday, complete with strength of schedule and an overall "rating" based on their algorithm which does not take in to consideration any type of human component to it (eliminating personal bias etc...) where coaches have a say. I don't know particulars of that algorithm but I know it's based on Wins, Losses, common opponents and how every team you play subsequently does the rest of the season. I'm sure it takes into account wins over teams in a higher division and losses to a team in a lower division into account as well.

D. If they did this, I think they could use this for their weekly "CIF" rankings and then also use it for the playoffs to do a true seeding where 1 plays 32, 2 plays 31, 3 plays 30 and so on.....just follow the maxpreps ratings....

E. In order for this to work though, CIF has to do away with their bylaws of not playing a league team in first or second round as well as eliminating the 1st place teams paired up against 3rd (4th etc) and 2nd paired up with 2nd place team from league as their criteria...since leagues are now so spread out within the divisions, does it really make sense to keep those rules? League championships and your league finish would carry less weight which I don't think is a bad thing since not all league "champs" and 2's and 3's are equally matched to begin with, especially with leagues now having multiple divisions represented...For example, one league is weak without competition and one is stacked...perfect example is J Serra as a second place team in "league" yet clearly, they're easily one of the best teams in Div. 1 and California....conversely, a league champion in one league that might not be as strong can lose to a 3 or 4 from another league that is loaded.
F. Personally, if CIF wants competitive equity to be the standard for divisions, why are they keeping the archaic version of how teams qualify for playoffs with "guaranteed" spots for each league when not every league is the same. League is only 6, 8, 10 or 12 matches depending on league size yet that's what determines who goes to playoffs and the privilege to win a ring?. Some teams play anywhere up to another 10-15 on top of that (if they played 10 league games, plus 3 tournaments where they get at least 4 matches each (12 games) and still could play another 4 preseason matches to fill out their maximum "20" matches allowed by CIF (tournaments counting as 2 matches each against that number). Make the whole season count towards playoff selection. If teams try and stack wins with weak opponents yielding higher wins and less losses, their rating will reflect it in the end more than likely and they'll be middle of the pack if not towards the bottom of their division because other teams have a higher strength of schedule and still might be getting same type of results. Not only that, teams that don't at least attempt to test themselves and hope to slide into playoffs will most certainly not be ready for playoffs and will get bounced early. Schedule up make all games matter.

It's late, I'm sure my thoughts aren't all iron clad but it's just a suggestion and thinking out loud...be kind with any comments as it's just an idea and not meant to offend. I'm sure there are holes in my thinking and I gladly welcome any "that would never work" thoughts for further examination. Good luck to your teams and schools.
 
  • Like
Reactions: USC
MWN and Soccer1019, you both make good points and explain the situation extremely well. My dd is a freshman this year and I have not dealt with CIF since I played way back when. My question is, is this a better system then the way it used to be done with individual leagues populating the same divisions?

I believe it is a better system because it is designed to ensure equity within the respective divisions and resulting playoffs. In the past, schools were placed in divisions based on their school size, now its based team performance, with the only caveat being that cross-country and track and field divisions remain based on school size. What the CIF is trying to avoid is schools within power leagues from always getting shut out of playoffs and trying to avoid blowouts by placing those teams in different divisions. Likewise, power teams get put into Division 1 to ensure a more competitive playoff environment. At the end of the day, however, a team needs to win at least 50% of their regular season games to have a chance to make it to the playoffs, so being competitive in league is still necessary.

Here is the "Playoff" document the CIF-SS publishes:
https://cifss.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/playoffs-blue-book-2017-2018.pdf

How does seeding for the playoff brackets work? The answers to "How on earth did our team draw that team?" is here on Page 10:
https://cifss.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/1718PLAYOFF-BULLETIN-2.pdf
 
Using MaxPreps to seed teams is a great idea...just want to add that the higher seeded team gets the home game, not this coin flip non-sense...for this coming week we have a league champion playing away vs a third place team that barely has a winning record.
 
UHS vs HBHS perhaps? I'd agree with eliminating coin flips as well. Once a true seed occurs you can easily give the higher seed the home game. Never understood the logic of giving a league champ or a seed the home game in the first and supposedly "easiest" round...where's the benefit there? At least the CIF State office has it right by allowing the higher seed to keep home games throughout...Granted it's 3 games max and only 8 teams but why can't the CIF sections adopt same?
 
Using MaxPreps to seed teams is a great idea...just want to add that the higher seeded team gets the home game, not this coin flip non-sense...for this coming week we have a league champion playing away vs a third place team that barely has a winning record.
I feel your pain on that one. We are in the same boat.
 
Using MaxPreps to seed teams is a great idea...just want to add that the higher seeded team gets the home game, not this coin flip non-sense...for this coming week we have a league champion playing away vs a third place team that barely has a winning record.

Maxpreps uses a totally different (and proprietary secret) method to rank teams which allows them to publish "national" rankings.
 
How did Santiago Corona Women's soccer stay in the top 4 this year--they are the only D1 school in their league and couldn't get a victory vs D3 Centennial or D3 Roosevelt, that is four games, and they finished in second place in league. Sure they should be in D1 but as a fourth seed, what a joke. IMO, Troy HS should have been in the top 4, at least they won their league.
Care to edit your post after yesterday? Division 1 is showing to be as tough as advertised. Los Al, Aliso, Troy, Hart...all "league champs" unable to advance past 2nd round. I think league results don't always tell the whole story. Quarterfinal teams left are 4 league champs (down from 10 in first round) 2 second place league teams, a 3rd place team and an at large....anything can happen in playoff soccer.
 
Back
Top