SportStars NorCal Girls Basketball Rankings | Jan. 17

Nine Teams Are In New Spots And A New Team Joins The Fun As The NorCal Girls Basketball Rankings Shift Following MLK Showcases •

NorCal Girls Basketball Rankings

All records are through Monday, Jan. 16. Previous rank in parenthesis. Records obtained through MaxPreps.com
PICTURED ABOVE: No. 17 Pleasant Valley-Chico Celebrates It’s MLK Showcase Win Over Lynnwood At St. Mary’s-Stockton. (Bob Paddock photo/Facebook)

1. (1) Piedmont  15-0

2. (2) Archbishop Mitty-San Jose   14-2

3. (3) Folsom   14-2

4. (4) St. Mary’s-Stockton   14-7

5. (5) Salesian-Richmond   15-3

6. (6) Oakland Tech   13-5

7. (7) Sacred Heart Cathedral-S.F.   14-2

8. (8) Carondelet-Concord   17-3

9. (13) Cardinal Newman-Santa Rosa   15-6

10. (10) San Ramon Valley-Danville   15-3

11. (11) Acalanes-Lafayette  11-5

12. (9) Antelope  15-3

13. (15) McClatchy-Sacramento   14-5

14. (16) Vanden-Fairfield   13-7

15. (17) Heritage-Brentwood   13-3

16. (18) Bishop O’Dowd-Oakland   10-5

17. (19) Pleasant Valley-Chico   17-3

18. (20) Pinole Valley   13-5

19. (14) Monta Vista-Cupertino   13-1

20. (NR) Marin Catholic-Kentfield   13-4

DROPPED OUT: No. 12 Christian Brothers-Sacramento

5 TEAMS KNOCKING:

Colfax (16-2), Eureka (16-4), Palo Alto (10-4), Pinewood-Los Altos Hills (5-5) and St. Patrick-St. Vincent-Vallejo (12-3)

FAST BREAKDOWN

So how did St. Mary’s-Stockton go 0-2 over the Martin Luther King, Jr., Day weekend, at home, and still stay at No. 4? Because both losses — to Shabach Christian of Maryland and Centennial of Nevada — were to nationally ranked teams. Strength of schedule does matter, as Cardinal Newman’s ascension into the Top 10 shows. Yes, there are some losses by big margins, but Newman has played a brutal schedule, and then hammering Antelope by 35 made it clear Santa Rosa’s finest is a team to watch out for in postseason.

There might be some shakeups this weekend, though, after the SI20 showcase Saturday at Carondelet and De La Salle, as No. 1 Piedmont will face No. 11 Acalanes in an 8 p.m. game Saturday, and No. 3 Folsom meets No. 5 Salesian an hour earlier. The intersectional highlight is SoCal power Mater Dei-Santa Ana versus St. Mary’s-Stockton in a late afternoon matchup, though that won’t have much impact on the NorCal rankings.

Our rankings, of course, don’t matter to the teams nearly as much as what the sections will do in postseason. First up will be the North Coast and Central Coast decisions about which teams land in the Open divisions, and which teams drop to Division I, which will then set up where teams are placed in NorCals.

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For many teams, the goal is to be the highest seed possible in the lowest division — for example, being the second seed in NorCal Division II is vastly preferable to being the 15th seed in Division I.

How to make that happen? A combination of big wins and occasional losses is often the best course of action, but even then, the CIF committee might do something goofy like bring Clovis West-Fresno and some other Central Section teams north into the NorCal brackets, spoiling all those carefully laid plans.