Breaking down basketball brackets

Second-round games are Saturday, quarterfinal matchups are next Tuesday, semifinals games are next Thursday, all at the home of the higher seed.

The CCS championship games in divisions I through V will be held at either Mission College-Santa Clara or Santa Clara High School, Saturday, Feb. 28.

The site of the Open Division championship games is to be determined, but they will be played Friday night.

All times are to be determined.

There are so many story lines and numbers to crunch, that it’s nearly impossible to get to all of them ahead of the games this weekend, so here are some tidbits to keep in mind as the playoffs move forward.

More than a dozen county teams double up

There are 176 teams — 88 boys’ teams and 88 girls’ squads — that qualify for the CCS in six different brackets. The top eight teams in the section play in the Open Division, before the other 80 are slotted into their division of enrollment, from Division I down to Division V, 16 teams in each division.

Of those 176 teams, 39 are from San Mateo County, with 18 county schools sending both their boys’ and girls’ teams.

A dozen of the 17 Peninsula Athletic League schools had both their teams make the cut — Aragon, Burlingame, Carlmont, El Camino, Half Moon Bay, Hillsdale, Jefferson, Menlo-Atherton, Mills, San Mateo, Terra Nova and Woodside.

The West Bay Athletic League had four schools have both their boys’ and girls’ teams qualify — Crystal, Menlo School, Priory and Sacred Heart Prep. The Private School Athletic League will be represented by both Design Tech and Summit Shasta.

An honorable mention goes to Serra and it’s sisters schools — Notre Dame-Belmont and Mercy — who made the postseason cut, as well.

Not all losing records are the same

Because of the subjective nature of the CCS basketball seedings and the qualifications for the CCS playoffs — a team must have a .500 or better record in either non-league or league play — it’s fairly common for teams with losing records to make the field.

Out of 176 boys’ and girls’ teams that made the various CCS brackets, there were 37 teams with losing overall records, which is not a prerequisite for qualification.

That includes both Mills’ teams. But their respective seedings are on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Mills’ boys’ team qualified with a 10-14 overall record this season, which earned it the No. 11 seed in the Division III bracket and a road trip to No. 6 Santa Cruz at 7 p.m. Saturday.

The Lady Vikings, on the other hand, have one more win and one less loss than their male counterparts, finishing the season at 11-13, with the defending Division III champion garnering the No. 1 seed in Division III and getting byes until Tuesday’s quarterfinals.

And the Vikings’ aren’t the only team with a losing record to be a top seed. The Valley Christian girls, despite a 9-15 record, are No. 1 in Division II.

It’s subjective.

Good news: You made CCS! Bad news: You’re in the Open Division

It’s a pretty safe guess to say a WCAL team will the Open Division championship. Six of the eight boys’ teams in the league have won an Open title since its inception in 2013, with Mitty winning five and Riordan looking to three-peat this year as the No. 1 seed.

CCS might as well name the girls’ Open Division trophy after Mitty because the Lady Monarchs own it, having won 10 of the 13 Open championship and will look to make it five in a row this season.

And when it comes to the PAL teams that qualify for the top bracket in the section — this year it’s No. 7 Menlo-Atherton boys and No. 8 Half Moon Bay girls — they are seen as, essentially, sacrificial lambs. The Bears and the Cougars would need the equivalent of the “Miracle on Ice” — when the 1980 United State Olympic hockey team knocked off a supposedly unbeatable Soviet Union team — to have a chance at winning an Open championship.

There is a silver lining for those teams, however. Not only do Open Division teams automatically qualify for the Nor Cal playoffs, they get to sharpen their game against some of the best teams in California. One of the best things the CCS did was turn the Open Division into two pools of four teams, ensuring at least three games for each team. That gives them much-needed high-caliber reps entering regional play.

Is WBAL second-best league in CCS?

If the WCAL rules the Open Division and is, without an argument, the best league in the CCS, does the WBAL dominance of Division IV make it the second-best league in the section?

Not much of an argument on the girls’ side. Second-seeded Priory (19-5) and No. 6 Pinewood (20-4) qualified for the eight-team Open Division bracket, the best of the best in CCS, for the third year in a row. It’s the fourth straight season the WBAL’s Foothill Division has sent two teams to the Open Division.

The Pinewood girls are the only non-WCAL team to win an Open Division title, in either the boys’ or girls’ bracket, winning it in 2021.

But its Division IV in which the WBAL dominates. WBAL girls’ teams have won six of the last 10 Division IV titles, with Menlo School the four-time reigning champion.

And the odds indicate a WBAL team winning it again this season as three of the top four teams are from the league’s Foothill Division — No. 1 Notre Dame-Belmont (17-4), No. 3 Sacred Heart Prep (14-7) and No. 4 Menlo (15-9).

WBAL boys’ teams have have also won its share of Division IV championships, as well — five since 2016. King’s Academy, which won titles in 2023 and 2025, won’t defend its Division IV championship — because the Knights earned a spot in the Open Division this season.

The boys’ DIV bracket is as WBAL top heavy as the girls’ side, but it has two of the top three teams in top-seeded Sacred Heart Prep (13-11) and No. 3 Menlo (13-11).