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The most competitive playoff bracket in the US?


Las Vegas_JC

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The Arizona open bracket looks amazingly tough. 
 

Here are the games:

Chandler  6A #1 seed 10-0

VS

Chaparral 6A #4 seed  8-2

 

Pinnacle    6A #3 seed 8-2

VS

Salpointe   4A #2 seed 9-0

 

Horizon       5A #2 seed 9-1

VS 

Saguaro      4A #1 seed 9-1

 

Hamilton     6A #2 seed 8-2

VS 

Centennial  5A #1 seed 9-1

I realize that this format is not necessary for all states but it can possibly work in Florida. 

8929D49A-AFD5-4B69-8737-4A1A09F33DD4.png

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21 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

The overall quality of teams in CIFSS D1 is better, but the D2 bracket will be way more competitive. I honestly think 10 of the 16 teams have a legit chance at winning.

I‘m talking about the system that is in place in AZ not necessarily the teams that are involved. The way that Arizona is running their open tournament brings together the best teams from throughout their state. At its conclusion there will be no doubt who the best team is in AZ and the computer polls are going to give a huge boost to their eventual open champion. 

Whereas the CIFSS bracket is only a regional format, it’s top heavy and we already knew that either MD or SJB would be the open representative before the season kicked off. CA could actually learn from the AZ format and put the best of the best including the north and the south into one bracket. 

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19 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

The overall quality of teams in CIFSS D1 is better, but the D2 bracket will be way more competitive. I honestly think 10 of the 16 teams have a legit chance at winning.

Can you take time to explain the playoffs for SJB and MD?  I see they are in 8 team bracket...what happens after that?  3 wins = cif Southern section champ.  + 1 vs DLS   Or whoever?

 

 

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57 minutes ago, GardenStateBaller said:

DBP has to beat #77 BC, #31 SJR and #35 SPP to win it all in NJ. 

BC has to beat #111 DBP, #31 SJR and #35 SPP to win the NJ Chip. 

One more week of regular season play in the WCAC so the matchups are not yet decided but the four teams that will face off are all ranked in the top 36 ...#21 Gonzaga, #25 SJC, #30 DeMatha and #36 OLGC. Should be exciting.

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7 minutes ago, Las Vegas_JC said:

I‘m talking about the system that is in place in AZ not necessarily the teams that are involved. The way that Arizona is running their open tournament brings together the best teams from throughout their state. At its conclusion there will be no doubt who the best team is in AZ and the computer polls are going to give a huge boost to their eventual open champion. 

Whereas the CIFSS bracket is only a regional format, it’s top heavy and we already knew that either MD or SJB would be the open representative before the season kicked off. CA could actually learn from the AZ format and put the best of the best including the north and the south into one bracket. 

Right, the subject of your thread is "most competitive playoff bracket", not which playoff does the best job of putting all of the top teams in a single bracket. This is why I called out CIFS D2 and not CiFSS D1. As you rightly point out D1 won't be competitive. As for AZ, there's probably a 75% chance Chandler wins despite all of the best teams being in that bracket. You want to take a stab at who wins CIFSS D2?

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5 minutes ago, Texasball said:

Can you take time to explain the playoffs for SJB and MD?  I see they are in 8 team bracket...what happens after that?  3 wins = cif Southern section champ.  + 1 vs DLS   Or whoever?

Yep, that's pretty much it. Just remove the "or whoever" part. 😆

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1 minute ago, Texasball said:

Why is it only 4 game playoff this year?

CIFSS changed D1 to be top 8 teams out of 24 instead of top 16 out of 18 to try and eliminate first round blowouts. Problem is that MD and SJB are blowing out teams even in the semis so you'll probably still see some uneven scores. It makes the D2 bracket better though.

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2 hours ago, Las Vegas_JC said:

The Arizona open bracket looks amazingly tough. 
 

Here are the games:

Chandler  6A #1 seed 10-0

VS

Chaparral 6A #4 seed  8-2

 

Pinnacle    6A #3 seed 8-2

VS

Salpointe   4A #2 seed 9-0

 

Horizon       5A #2 seed 9-1

VS 

Saguaro      4A #1 seed 9-1

 

Hamilton     6A #2 seed 8-2

VS 

Centennial  5A #1 seed 9-1

I realize that this format is not necessary for all states but it can possibly work in Florida. 

8929D49A-AFD5-4B69-8737-4A1A09F33DD4.png

From my understanding Top 2 4A and Top 2 5A and 4 6A teams.

Is this going to be the setup every year or do they have some type of power ranking system to pick teams?

Like say Salpointe isn't that good.  Would they replace them with a 5th 6A team?

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35 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

CIFSS changed D1 to be top 8 teams out of 24 instead of top 16 out of 18 to try and eliminate first round blowouts. Problem is that MD and SJB are blowing out teams even in the semis so you'll probably still see some uneven scores. It makes the D2 bracket better though.

I’m personally not a huge fan of losing that first round game, now MD and Bosco will only have 1 home field game the whole playoffs, plus the kids miss a week of tape that many will need to get P5 offers...

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34 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

Right, the subject of your thread is "most competitive playoff bracket", not which playoff does the best job of putting all of the top teams in a single bracket.

Calpreps lists all 8 of these AZ teams as the top 8 teams in that state today. In a like manner Massey lists 7 of these teams as the best in AZ. Does that not sound competitive and compelling to you? 

34 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

 

This is why I called out CIFS D2 and not CiFSS D1. As you rightly point out D1 won't be competitive.

Would you not like to see that change?

34 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

 

As for AZ, there's probably a 75% chance Chandler wins despite all of the best teams being in that bracket.

Centennial might upset Chandler and that’s what makes this format great. Most of the games should be a challenge and we won’t know who the champion will be until December 7th. 

34 minutes ago, dntn31 said:

 

You want to take a stab at who wins CIFSS D2?

IDK much about the CIF D2 teams. Except that if OLU and Santa Margarita lose in the first round that would not be good for the trinity league. 

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27 minutes ago, Frosty4024 said:

From my understanding Top 2 4A and Top 2 5A and 4 6A teams.

Yes that’s correct. 

27 minutes ago, Frosty4024 said:

Is this going to be the setup every year or do they have some type of power ranking system to pick teams?

Like say Salpointe isn't that good.  Would they replace them with a 5th 6A team?

I would defer to @Wooderson at this point. He has a better understanding of their system in the coming years. 

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1 hour ago, Las Vegas_JC said:

Calpreps lists all 8 of these AZ teams as the top 8 teams in that state today. In a like manner Massey lists 7 of these teams as the best in AZ. Does that not sound competitive and compelling to you? 

I think perhaps it's less compelling to me than it is to you. I guess I still go back to the title of this thread and its reference to a "competitive" bracket. I think it boils down to how you choose to define "competitive". I don't think that simply having the best 8 teams in a bracket necessarily makes the bracket competitive. All you need to do is look at CIFSS D1 to show that. CIFSS has ~400 teams, the entire state of Arizona has ~200 teams. Are the top 8 teams (of ~400) in the D1 bracket? According to Calpreps it's 7 of the top 8, but even swapping out Calabasas for Corona Del Mar wouldn't make the D1 bracket any more competitive, due to the statistical outliers of the group (MD/SJB).

Using the CalPreps and Massey ratings we can look at the standard deviations of these brackets as a rough analogue for how competitive they are:

CIFSS D1:

cifssd1.PNG.2b06d9272112aaedd5016a0b3ed95afd.PNG

CIFSS D2:

cifssd2.PNG.6a7f76b9806295f40a489a1a2f0b5a75.PNG

AZ:

az.PNG.8523260f35aa4598f07e067bde3c5296.PNG

 

If you use standard deviation as a heuristic for how competitive the bracket is, then both CalPreps and Massey agree that CIFSS D2 is more competitive than AZ and both AZ and CIFSS D2 are much more competitive than CIFSS D1 (which I think we already agree to be true intuitively). For additional illustration, look at how the standard deviation plummets when removing MD and SJB from CIFSS D1 (it essentially normalizes that bracket to be more or less in line with the AZ and CIFSS D2 brackets):

cifssd1-minus_md_sjb.PNG.7375947e64bb421355e12e3ab78e5252.PNG

 

Now, let's do the same thing but with Chandler and the AZ bracket:

az-minus_chandler.PNG.8513f3411274cbbc9f30677ac64ad4bb.PNG

 

The standard deviation numbers essentially drop in half. You could really make the argument that Chandler makes the AZ bracket much less competitive than if it were otherwise excluded 

At the end of the day both the AZ and the CIFSS D2 brackets are competitive brackets (at least more competitive than most playoff brackets out there), but I would be careful with conflating "brackets that have the best teams" with "competitive brackets".

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2 hours ago, WCACguy said:

One more week of regular season play in the WCAC so the matchups are not yet decided but the four teams that will face off are all ranked in the top 36 ...#21 Gonzaga, #25 SJC, #30 DeMatha and #36 OLGC. Should be exciting.

I’m kind of confused about the WCAC.

A) the teams in this conference are undoubtedly the best teams from the states of Maryland and Washington DC. Sans St Frances. 

B) But the WCAC champ is not considered as a state champion of either state. Is that correct? 
 

Can either you or @NicholasMalibu explain this. 

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1 hour ago, dntn31 said:

I think perhaps it's less compelling to me than it is to you. I guess I still go back to the title of this thread and its reference to a "competitive" bracket. I think it boils down to how you choose to define "competitive". I don't think that simply having the best 8 teams in a bracket necessarily makes the bracket competitive. All you need to do is look at CIFSS D1 to show that. CIFSS has ~400 teams, the entire state of Arizona has ~200 teams. Are the top 8 teams (of ~400) in the D1 bracket? According to Calpreps it's 7 of the top 8, but even swapping out Calabasas for Corona Del Mar wouldn't make the D1 bracket any more competitive, due to the statistical outliers of the group (MD/SJB).

Using the CalPreps and Massey ratings we can look at the standard deviations of these brackets as a rough analogue for how competitive they are:

CIFSS D1:

cifssd1.PNG.2b06d9272112aaedd5016a0b3ed95afd.PNG

CIFSS D2:

cifssd2.PNG.6a7f76b9806295f40a489a1a2f0b5a75.PNG

AZ:

az.PNG.8523260f35aa4598f07e067bde3c5296.PNG

 

If you use standard deviation as a heuristic for how competitive the bracket is, then both CalPreps and Massey agree that CIFSS D2 is more competitive than AZ and both AZ and CIFSS D2 are much more competitive than CIFSS D1 (which I think we already agree to be true intuitively). For additional illustration, look at how the standard deviation plummets when removing MD and SJB from CIFSS D1 (it essentially normalizes that bracket to be more or less in line with the AZ and CIFSS D2 brackets):

cifssd1-minus_md_sjb.PNG.7375947e64bb421355e12e3ab78e5252.PNG

 

Now, let's do the same thing but with Chandler and the AZ bracket:

az-minus_chandler.PNG.8513f3411274cbbc9f30677ac64ad4bb.PNG

 

The standard deviation numbers essentially drop in half. You could really make the argument that Chandler makes the AZ bracket much less competitive than if it were otherwise excluded 

At the end of the day both the AZ and the CIFSS D2 brackets are competitive brackets (at least more competitive than most playoff brackets out there), but I would be careful with conflating "brackets that have the best teams" with "competitive brackets".

Thanks for this statistical breakdown. I also greatly appreciate the work that you do in making the weekly compilation poll. IMO that is the best way to determine the MNC. 
 

According to Calpreps the highest rated teams in California are MD, SJB, DLS, Mission Viejo, Centennial, Servite, JSerra and Central Fresno. Obviously Narbonne is out.  And Massey has Folsom instead of JSerra in the top 8. If the top 8 teams from the Massey ratings were in a CA state open bracket that would be a million times much more competitive and exciting compared to the Nov 15 and Nov 22 CIFSS games. 

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4 minutes ago, Las Vegas_JC said:

According to Calpreps the highest rated teams in California are MD, SJB, DLS, Mission Viejo, Centennial, Servite, JSerra and Central Fresno. Obviously Narbonne is out.  And Massey has Folsom instead of JSerra in the top 8. If the top 8 teams from the Massey ratings were in a CA state open bracket that would be a million times much more competitive and exciting compared to the Nov 15 and Nov 22 CIFSS games. 

Ya, I agree with that. I think the biggest hurdle for this is how geographically massive CA is. It would probably be too much to ask for teams separated by up to ~500 miles to travel (perhaps multiple weeks in a row) for playoff games.

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5 hours ago, Las Vegas_JC said:

I’m kind of confused about the WCAC.

A) the teams in this conference are undoubtedly the best teams from the states of Maryland and Washington DC. Sans St Frances. 

B) But the WCAC champ is not considered as a state champion of either state. Is that correct? 
 

Can either you or @NicholasMalibu explain this. 

A.) You’re correct. If you were to rank the top 5 teams in MD/DC it would without question be SFA and the 4 WCAC teams(DeMatha, Gonzaga, St. John’s College, and Good Counsel). The WCAC has three teams in northern Virginia, but they opted out of playing the top 4 in football. A team to watch out for is St. Mary’s Ryken from southern Maryland. They will probably move into the top division very soon and replace Bishop McNamara. They have a great HC in former Gonzaga/Malvern Prep(PA) Brady, and almost took out GC this year. 
 

B.) Maryland public schools refuse to merge with the private schools for a state playoff. It’s an awkward situation. The WCAC schools(DeMatha and Good Counsel) in Maryland plus SFA do not play for a state championship and it’s a shame. The DC WCAC schools(Gonzaga and St. John’s) are not allowed to play in the DC state championship due to fear of injury. They are the only two schools in DC that are banned from playoff play. 

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GA 7A and 6A this year are gonna be Great alot of heavy hitting matchups after RD 1. 

I think 6A is up in the air this year which is why its easily the 2nd best in the state this year. 

Valdosta

Lee County

Dacula 

Allatoona

Are all looking good this year. 

I'll even give John's Creek some Leniency.  I don't think they'll win state but they've been doing what they should do to their weak league and that's blow everyone out... They beat rival Alpharetta convincingly which I didn't expect.... 

But again there's some tougher teams than what they've been playing in region play in the playoffs... 

And 7A... You already know the deal. 

Lowndes

Marietta

Colquitt

Grayson

Archer

Mceachern 

North Gwinnett

7A is deep this year and I'd dare say they best playoff bracket in the nation in terms of both depth and competiveness. 

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