As always in the CIF’s competitive-based basketball model, some teams caught a break and some did not.
No method from which to choose 180-plus boys and girls high school basketball teams for multiple regional tournament brackets will ever be perfect, and the one used right now in California certainly has its flaws.
In the CIF’s model for the state brackets, some teams catch huge breaks and others catch bad ones. That’s what happens when every team that qualifies is ranked by its own section, submitted to CIF and then divided by strength into multiple divisions from top to bottom, which the CIF has done since introducing the competitive-based model in 2018.
To that end, the Sacred Heart Prep boys and Salesian girls caught a big break. Had the CIF picked eight teams for the Open, they would have been seeded eighth and opened the playoffs on the road against No. 1 seeds.