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MCAL SCHEDULE PROPOSAL   (ended up being adopted by league)


Tired of seeing the teams making the playoffs determined by "luck of the schedule" rather than which teams perform the best during the league season?  If you follow MCAL hoops closely, you probably already know that the random draw of which five teams each school plays twice goes a long way to determining the last couple playoff spots before the season even starts.  Nearly every year, a school performs better than another that beats it out for a playoff spot.  This happens due to nothing other than a weaker schedule for the team that makes the playoffs.  Often, this can make as much as a TWO game difference.  This also hurts teams post-MCAL as they try to make their case for selection and/or seeding at the NCS meeting.  Trying to explain that you actually outperformed (and beat head-to-head) a team that went 7-7 when you were 5-9 is very difficult to do, as those unfamiliar with the league simply don't understand the fact that not everybody plays the same difficulty of schedule.

What's the solution?  Obviously, the fairest thing to do would be to play a double-round-robin, but since it appears that will never happen, we feel the proposal below does the next best thing.  It takes the random element out of the selection of which five teams each school plays twice.


THE PROCEDURE
Schools are ranked from 1 to 10, based on total league wins (boys and girls combined) from the previous year.  In general in MCAL basketball, a particular school experiences comparable levels of success with the two genders, so combining results does not present much in the way of problems.

Schools ranked 1 to 10 would play the following five teams twice, and the other four teams just once.

 1 -> 2,4,5,7,9
 2 -> 1,3,6,8,10
 3 -> 2,4,5,7,10
 4 -> 1,3,6,8,9
 5 -> 1,3,6,8,9
 6 -> 2,4,5,7,10
 7 -> 1,3,6,8,10
 8 -> 2,4,5,7,9
 9 -> 1,4,5,8,10
10 -> 2,3,6,7,9


Games against teams played only once:
1st round of games: 1/3, 2/4, 5/10, 6/8, 7/9
2nd round of games: 1/6, 2/5, 3/9, 4/7, 8/10
3rd round of games: 1/8, 2/9, 3/6, 4/10, 5/7
4th round of games: 1/10, 2/7, 3/8, 4/5, 6/9


The difficulty of schedule is essentially exactly the same for every team, with several teams actually playing identical or nearly-identical schedules.  Adding up the places of the five teams each school plays twice equals 27 or 28 in every single case.  (The average team, in theory, should equal 27.5 because 1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9+10 divided by 2 equals 27.5, but of course, that wouldn't be possible.)  Additionally, every single team plays one of the top two teams twice, but not both.  Likewise, each school plays either the 3rd or 4th place team twice, either 5th or 6th twice, either 7th or 8th twice and either 9th or 10th twice.  Can't get much fairer than that!

Note: A slightly different version of this proposal that had top teams playing each other a bit more frequently (and likewise with the lower teams), was presented at the recent coaches all-league meeting.  It was apparent that a completely balanced schedule would garner more support.  [click here to see the original proposal]



TIEBREAKING FOR DETERMINING POSITION
If total wins for two schools are tied, go to:
-Total places (eg: 3rd+6th=9 is placed higher than 4th+6th=10, etc.)
-Highest place of the two genders (eg: a school finishing 2nd and a 7th gets placed above a school finishing 4th and 5th)
-After that, goes to the official MCAL drawn random numbers


Based on the 2007-2008 standings, the places used to determine next year's schedule are:

1st Branson
2nd Marin Catholic
3rd Redwood
4th San Marin
5th Justin-Siena
6th Drake
7th Tamalpais
8th Novato
9th Terra Linda
10th San Rafael