DE LA SALLE: COACH WANTS NORCAL OPEN GAME
By the time De La Salle plays Santa Margarita for the CIF Open Division state title game on Dec. 13, the Concord school will have gone 21 days without playing a game.
The Spartans beat Pittsburg on Nov. 21 to capture their 33rd consecutive North Coast Section title, earning a long three-week break. By maintaining their status as the best team in Northern California, De La Salle does not have to play a NorCal playoff game, and instead gets an automatic bid to the Open state championship game.
While three weeks of rest sounds nice, coach Justin Alumbaugh believes the long break is a disadvantage for his team.
“It’s a challenge. It’s really hard to figure out,” Alumbaugh said.
But Alumbaugh believes there is an easy solution to this problem.
“What needs to happen is the NorCal Open Division needs to come back,” Alumbaugh said. “The two best teams in NorCal need to play each other. This year, if that’s us and Folsom, great. If it’s us and Riordan, great. If a team loses and they don’t get to go, that’s OK. Not everybody needs a trophy.
“We need to play football games – 22 days between games is absurd. You look at the SoCal bracket and St John Bosco was the No. 1 team in the nation, and then eight days later, they’re out of the playoffs. Like, totally out. I think we need to think about what playoffs mean. And I think there’s a way that the northern commissioners can make this a little bit better.”
De La Salle won the state’s only two Open Division regional championship games in 2012 and 2013 beating Folsom both times. In 2014, the state went away from the regional championship and instead decided to send the best two teams from Northern and Southern California straight to the Open Division title games.
In 2021, NCS adopted the Open Division/Division I bracket model for its playoffs, meaning the bracket’s top two and bottom two seeds play for the Open Division title. The loser of the Open final drops into the Division I championship, while the open champion is finished with section play.
For De La Salle, the automatic bid to the Open Division state title game creates an extra built-in bye week. Santa Margarita, which competes in the Southern Section, played on Friday in the Division I title game as its section doesn’t have an Open Division, and will have a two-week break before playing De La Salle.
Nonetheless, Alumbaugh believes his team is ready for this moment.
The Spartans went through a gauntlet of a schedule that includes wins over Lakeland-Florida, Serra, Cathedral Catholic, St. Mary’s-Stockton and Pittsburg.
“Almost all the teams we played are continuing on,” Alumbaugh said. “There’s really good football in Northern California, and we’ve played the best. We think that that has prepared us to do a good job.”
– Nathan Canilao
LOCAL MATCHUPS
Three Bay Area teams are guaranteed to reach state championship games this year.
The most obvious one is De La Salle, which earned the NorCal bye straight into the Open Division state title game. But two NorCal games will pit a pair of Bay Area teams, guaranteeing that at least one will make a trip down to Southern California to play for a state championship.
In the Division 3-AA NorCal final, Monte Vista (8-5) will make the trip across the Bay Bridge to face St. Ignatius (7-6), matching up the Division II champions in the NCS and CCS.
“Great program,” SI coach JaJuan Lawson said of Monte Vista. “I’ve known about them since I was in grade school watching Brett Nottingham. They play an extremely tough schedule in the EBAL. It will be a fun challenge, what you want in a NorCal regional.”
In the 4-A game, NCS D-III champ El Cerrito (11-2) will cross the Dumbarton bridge to play CCS D-III winner Menlo-Atherton (7-6).
“Should be a great game,” said M-A coach Chris Saunders. “They are a fast and physical team that has won a lot of games. Their playmakers jump out on film and will be a tough task to contain on offense and special teams. Should be a great NorCal matchup.”
For El Cerrito coach Tim Johnson, the chance to play a NorCal game validates the work his staff and players have put in to recover from a difficult season last year. The Gauchos were barred from last year’s postseason after the NCS ruled they had played ineligible players in multiple games.
“We’re just excited for the opportunity to compete, considering how our season ended last year,” Johnson said. “It was a tough offseason because of all the kids that transferred and the uncertainty of the program. But through hard work and determination, we’ve found a way to bounce back.”
– Christian Babcock
CIF ASSOCIATE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR TALKS NORCAL PLACEMENTS
Where teams are placed in the NorCal matchups is always a hot topic of conversation.
McClymonds (10-2), after some lobbying from coach Michael Peters, was slotted into the Division 3-A game against Roseville (11-2) from the Sacramento area.
Peters said last week after winning the Silver Bowl that playing in Division II or III is a “disadvantage” for McClymonds due to its smaller roster size at a school with about 300 students. He did note that he was hoping to be put in “the low Division III or high Division IV to make it a competitive game.”
CIF Associate Executive Director Brian Seymour was sympathetic to Peters’ concerns when he spoke to the Bay Area News Group on Sunday. The Warriors were in 3-AA last year and should have a chance to compete this year, even though they are still in D-III.
“It’s always tough, simply because Michael does a great job of trying to schedule difficult contests for his kids early in the year,” Seymour said. “Because once they get into league, you don’t have control over that. He does a good job with scheduling out of league to get an idea of where he stands with his team.
“So each year, we look at that. In years past, we’ve had them as high as 2-A, and it’s probably too high. Because the roster depth (discrepancy) is a lot, right? That comes into play when you’re looking at matching up teams all the way down from the highest games down to the lowest games. The roster depth does have an impact on some things.”
Fellow Oakland team Bishop O’Dowd (9-4) moved up to 5-AA after romping through the NCS Division VI field, winning every game by at least 23 points.
“They kind of ran roughshod through there, so we moved them up,” Seymour said. “We’re not afraid to move teams up when we think that’s where they belong.”
Seymour also addressed why SI and Menlo-Atherton will be hosting their regional games. SI traveled to Fresno to play the school now known as Central East last fall, so they were in line to host.
M-A’s situation was a little more complicated.
“El Cerrito hosted Grant(-Sacramento) a couple of years ago in the regional,” Seymour said. “Menlo-Atherton actually hosted a state game back before we did these state games in the lower levels. They hosted a state game, but they actually hosted it at Sequoia High School. It was a district stadium instead of theirs. It came down to Menlo-Atherton had the ability to host that game, and we needed another game in the CCS footprint, and that worked out.”
Pittsburg will host Central East in the 1-A game. Both schools hosted and won NorCal title games last year before falling in their respective state championship games.
“Placing the teams on the bracket is not the hardest part of it,” Seymour said. “The hardest part of it is trying to deal with who is hosting and who is traveling. There are a lot of details that need to go into that. We try to spread the games around as best we can.
“What it came down to with them is the North Coast Section needed to have some games, and the Central Section needed to have some games. And so we were able to evenly distribute those home games between both of those two sections.”
Finally, Lincoln-San Jose will host in its first NorCal appearance. Seymour attributed that decision to the balance between sections and said the CIF does not intentionally prioritize rewarding first-time entrants with a home matchup.
– Christian Babcock