#3 Corona Del Mar wins CIF!! Congrats!
Every D1 team in Marmonte made the playoff tournament … But why? Newbury Park and Oaks Christian were both eliminated in the Wild Card game. The games weren’t even competitive (17-2 and 16-4 losses). Why play those games? Why did two teams which won just 3 out of 8 league games make the playoffs? Two of those wins were against a D3 opponent, Calabasas, which didn’t win a league game again this year … On that subject, CIF needs to get Calabasas into a division in which they can be competitive. It is not fair to Calabasas to be playing against teams that are a lot better than they are. It’s been years since that squad won a league game. Having a D1 team play a D2 team is a mismatch, and Calabasas is a D3 team … How does that make any sense?
Westlake drew Corona Del Mar in the first round of the playoffs, and in the end, Corona Del Mar won it all. Unlucky for Westlake, but if you look at the teams in the second round, I don’t believe Westlake could have beaten any of them … One and done again this year for Westlake …
All D1 Marmonte teams lost in the first round except for Agoura, which lost in the second round. Congrats to Agoura for making it to round two in the tournament, putting them in the top eight. Considering the talent level in this tournament, getting to round two is respectable. That’s a win for a home team … Great season, and hopefully, next year will be better …
More shenanigans from CIF … #7 Los Alamitos was in the Wild Card game, and #10 Tesoro played Agoura. Those two should have been switched. CIF is disregarding the rankings and positioning teams to play easier schedules … I would like to know how CIF or its coaches justified putting #7 Los Alamitos in the Wild Card game while #20 Santiago skipped the Wild Card game … and lost to Loyola, 15-1, in a hardly competitive game … The top eight teams in this tournament were talented. Congrats to them:
#2 Mater Dei
#8 Trabuco Hills
#5 Loyola
#3 Corona Del Mar
#4 Foothill
#6 Agoura
#7 Los Alamitos
#1 St Margaret’s
If you want a competitive D1 lacrosse tournament, have the top eight teams play a double-elimination tournament and get rid of all these noncompetitive games. Nobody needs to play a 15-1 game … Move the other teams to D2 and have a D2 tournament. It would be more competitive and fun to watch …
My only surprise in the playoffs was St. Margaret’s loss to Foothill … I really did think St. Margaret’s was the better team, but they weren’t on that day. That’s where a double-elimination game would have helped the best team win the tournament.
Up next, 7v7 football during the summer… I have been poking around and seeing a big issue: a lot of athletes are messing up on grades. This has to be a direct result of classes being on Zoom … The fallout of school-by-video is coming. College students graduating from a university with only two real years of college? Zoom doesn’t count, and it lowered teaching standards … We shall see — onto the next.
