This Season, Locale a Factor in Making Playoff Pairings

Boys’ basketball coaches in the Southern Section were in for plenty of surprises when the playoff pairings were released Sunday.

For starters, the field has continued to shrink from two years ago when every school was allowed to participate in the postseason. This season, 217 teams in 10 divisions were guaranteed berths and another 36 received at-large bids.

Those who qualified also found a different procedure used for setting the brackets. The section’s basketball advisory committee put more emphasis on geography and less on equity to come up with the pairings.

This was done in an attempt to lessen travel problems and costs, which were expected to escalate because of freeway and road problems caused by last month’s earthquake. As a result, teams from the same league could meet as early as the second round.

“Because we dropped some of our regular rules, the brackets were certainly easier to set,” said Dean Crowley, Southern Section commissioner. “We tried to regionalize the pairings as much as possible, and at the same time maintain as much balance as possible.”

The smaller field and regionalized brackets were not as tough to take for many coaches as the fact the many divisions begin the playoffs as early as Tuesday.

In the past, the first round of the playoffs started on Friday. This season, four divisions open on Tuesday.