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MCAL SCHEDULE PROPOSAL  (original version)


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 put into five groups, 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.  The two highest totals go in the 1st group, next highest in the 2nd group, etc.
-Every team plays their co-group member twice.
-The 1st group plays the 2nd group teams twice; the 4th group plays the 5th group teams twice.
-The 1st and 4th groups play a 2nd game against each other as well, but only against one of the teams in the other group (not both); same with the 2nd and 5th groups.
-All other groups (1st, 2nd, 4th and 5th) play one of the 3rd group teams twice.

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

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



TIEBREAKING FOR DETERMINING GROUPS, AS WELL AS POSITION WITHIN GROUP
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 2005-2006 standings, the places used to determine next year's schedule would be:

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