All-Inclusive Playoff Format Finding Favor : Prep basketball: Southern Section administrator says the mildly criticized new postseason structure that allows every team to qualify will remain intact for the 1991-92 season.

Expect few changes, if any, in the format of the Southern Section basketball playoffs next season despite a system that makes the professional basketball and hockey playoffs look downright stringent.

According to Southern Section administrator Dean Crowley, the 1990-91 format will remain unchanged next season despite a smattering of criticism.

“We’ve had a few complaints and letters,” Crowley said. “But there hasn’t been a great uproar in protest of the system.”

Although 16 of the 27 teams in the NBA and 16 of 21 in the NHL qualify for the playoffs, every team in the Southern Section’s 10 boys’ and girls’ divisions was eligible to enter postseason play in 1990-91.

The Oak Park boys’ team, for example, finished the regular season winless in 18 games, but nonetheless played L. A. Baptist (and were crushed, 79-43) in a IV-A Division playoff qualifying game.

The section’s divisions are based on enrollment, although a team can petition the section to move up.

The I-AA Division is for the largest schools (more than 2,450 students), with the V-A Division reserved for the smallest (less than 95 students).

This is the third season in which the multiple-division format based on enrollment has been in use, but it was the first time that all teams were eligible for postseason play.

In the previous two seasons, teams were required to post .500 records or better in order to qualify for the playoffs, but after coaches protested that the policy discriminated against teams in tough leagues and encouraged teams to schedule weak opponents in the preleague season to pump up their records, the Southern Section decided to invite every team to the postseason party.

“The other way had some drawbacks, and so does this one,” Crowley said. “But I think it’s better than it was before.”

Opponents of the current system argue that it cheapens and dilutes the playoffs. By allowing every team to enter postseason play, the system offers little penalty for teams that play poorly, they say.

“I don’t see the equity in it,” Hoover Coach Kirt Kohlmeier said. “It’s teaching kids that you can get rewarded for nothing. I don’t think that’s right.”

Kohlmeier, the boys’ coach at Hoover for 11 seasons, was one of the few coaches in the Southern Section who did not enter his team in the playoffs.

The Tornadoes were 7-16 during the regular season and tied for fifth in the six-team Pacific League with a 2-8 record.

“Why should we be given something when we didn’t perform up to a certain standard of excellence,” said Kohlmeier, who guided Hoover to a 27-2 record and a runner-up finish in the 1981-82 3-A Division playoffs. “If we had finished third or better in league, I would have gone to the playoffs, but we didn’t.

“I didn’t feel like I would have been teaching the kids anything if we had gone. You have to earn your rewards, it’s that simple.”

Chris Nikchevich, Crespi’s coach, and Mick Cady, his counterpart at Notre Dame, both said that the current format diminishes the importance of a league title and, therefore, league games.

“I saw a lot of (Mission League) games that lacked intensity this season and shouldn’t have,” said Nikchevich, who graduated from Crespi in 1982. “I think the fact that a team knew it was going to make the playoffs no matter what had a lot to do with that. It took some of the edge away from the kids.”

Until 1989, a team had to finish in the top three in league play to guarantee itself a berth in the playoffs, but with that no longer the case, a team’s finish in league does not mean as much.

“We had certain road games this season which I expected to be much tougher than they were,” said Cady, who guided Notre Dame to the III-A Division semifinals this season. “I think there were times when the other teams simply didn’t play that hard because they knew they were going to make the playoffs, no matter what.”

Crowley and Thousand Oaks Coach Ed Chevalier contend that the current format gives teams that are in particularly tough leagues, or teams that have been hampered because of injured or ineligible players early in the season, a chance to play in the postseason.

“If a team was hit hard by injuries early in the season, but then gets hot when the players return, they can still get a chance to prove themselves in the playoffs,” Crowley said.

Chevalier said that the format is more fair to teams such as Newbury Park, a II-A Division school with a student body of 1,540, which is playing in the Marmonte League against I-AA schools Channel Islands, Royal and Simi Valley, I-A Thousand Oaks, and II-AA Agoura, Camarillo and Westlake.

“In the past, they’ve had a hard time making the playoffs,” Chevalier said of the Panthers, who compiled a 14-60 record in league play during the past six years. “Now, they’ve got a chance to get in.”

Added Crowley: “A team still has to win several games to win a championship. It’s not like lousy teams won any titles this year.”

The average record of the 20 teams that won Southern Section titles was 24-5, and all but four champions were among the top four seeded teams in their respective divisions.

The system does have some major flaws, however, as evidenced by the Lynwood boys’ team, which forfeited 16 games because it used an ineligible player and entered the playoffs with a 3-21 record.

In previous seasons, such a record would have kept the Knights out of the playoffs, but not this year.

They defeated Montebello in a I-AA Division playoff qualifying game, then rolled past Rowland, Long Beach Poly and Eisenhower before losing to Millikan in the semifinals.

So what was the penalty for breaking a rule? Crowley admitted that he did not have an answer.

The Lynwood case raises serious questions. What would prevent schools from intentionally using ineligible players in the future if they know they still can enter the playoffs, even if they get caught?

“We investigate ineligible players on a case-by-case basis,” Crowley said. “If we found out that a school was deliberately using ineligible players, we would penalize them severely.”

Although it appears that the section’s playoff format will not change next season, the seeding committee itself could be altered.

The current “committee” is composed of Crowley and Scott Cathcart, the Southern Section’s director of media relations.

Crowley said that he and Cathcart labored for about 20 hours over seedings for the boys’ and girls’ playoffs this year. With the playoff qualifying games starting Feb. 12, the boys’ playoffs were seeded on the previous Saturday, and the girls’ on Sunday.

“It was very tedious and tiring. . . . We made a few mistakes in the bracketing,” Crowley said. “In a few instances, teams from the same league met each other in the early rounds and we’ve always tried to prevent that from happening.”

In the future, a group of three to five, including school administrators and/or sportswriters, could make up the seeding committee, according to Crowley.

“I think having sportswriters on the committee would give the brackets more balance,” Crowley said. “After all, they’re covering a lot of these teams.”