Monday Morning Lights: What data says about CCS, NCS football playoffs
CCS VS. NCS PLAYOFFS: WHAT NUMBERS SAY
The section football playoffs have come and gone, which means fresh data is available for anyone who likes to review the differences between the Central Coast Section and North Coast Section.
The CCS playoff format is 100 percent competitive-equity, with its divisions determined on the day of the seeding meeting and based on a points system that factors in results and strength of schedule, as well as calpreps.com’s computer ratings.
The NCS is a combination of competitive equity and enrollment, with its divisions announced each off-season.
If you’re into competitive games, the CCS remains the leader by a sizeable margin among the Bay Area’s two largest sections.
Here is the data from this year’s playoffs:
Margin of victory
CCS: 16.3 per game (35 games)
NCS: 25.5 per game (48 games)
Single-digit results
CCS: 14 in 35 games (40 percent)
NCS: 10 in 48 games (20.8 percent)
Games decided by 40-plus points
CCS: 1 in 35 games (2.9 percent)
NCS: 9 in 48 games (18.8 percent)
Games decided by 30-plus points
CCS: 6 in 35 games (17.2 percent)
NCS: 18 in 48 games (37.5 percent)
Games decided by 20-plus points
CCS: 15 in 35 games (42.9 percent)
NCS: 31 in 48 games (64.6 percent)
Biggest upsets
CCS: No. 7 Wilcox over No. 2 St. Francis 52-28 in Open/Division I and No. 8 Christopher over No. 1 Archbishop Mitty 32-28 in Division II.
NCS: No. 5 Ferndale over No. 1 Clear Lake 20-12 in Division VII.
Best games
CCS: No. 4 Los Gatos over No. 3 St. Ignatius 21-17 in Open/Division I, No. 8 Christopher over No. 5 Menlo School 21-17 in Division II, No. 1 Palo Alto over No. 2 Mountain View 34-33 in Division IV.
NCS: No. 2 San Ramon Valley over No. 7 Campolindo 38-31 (OT) in Open/Division I, No. 1 El Cerrito over No. 2 Windsor 34-31 in Division II.
Champions (including seeds)
CCS: No. 1 Serra, No. 4 Los Gatos (Open/Division I), No. 2 Soquel (Division II), No. 4 Palma (Division III), No. 1 Palo Alto (Division IV), No. 3 South San Francisco (Division V)
NCS: No. 1 De La Salle, No. 3 Pittsburg (Open/Division I), No. 1 El Cerrito (Division II), No. 1 Marin Catholic (Division III), No. 2 Acalanes (Division IV), No. 1 Miramonte (Division V), No. 1 St. Vincent de Paul (Division VI), No. 5 Ferndale (Division VII).
— Darren Sabedra
MOUNTAIN VIEW: EMOTIONAL SEASON ENDS
Dillon Daniels put two fingers as close together as he could, to show the margin of defeat Mountain View experienced in its season-ending loss to Palo Alto on Saturday for the CCS Division IV championship.
Daniels wore his white No. 5 jersey and spent most of the game taking photographs and encouraging teammates, the senior’s role after he suffered a severe leg injury in the season opener.
As the game unfolded in back-and-forth fashion, Daniels took a knee and lowered his head. After the game, he acknowledged that he was thinking about everything that happened this season.
His mother, Lucinda, collapsed on the field the night Daniels was injured and died a few days later. The Mountain View community rallied around the Daniels family in an outpouring of support and compassion. Dillon’s brother, Brandon, was a freshman in the football program this past season.
Dillon was one of the last Mountain View players to leave the field on Saturday at San Jose City College after the Spartans lost 34-33.
“It’s hard on him,” Mountain View coach Tim Lugo said. “As a teammate, he’s all in. He’s all in with our guys. The kids played their hearts out tonight. We all knew it was going to be a good football game.”
In a season that began in unimaginable tragedy and included injuries and an 0-5 run in the Peninsula Athletic League’s strongest division, Mountain View nearly celebrated a section championship. But Palo Alto stopped a two-point attempt in the final minute to secure the victory.
“Our kids will be successful for the rest of their lives because of what they endured this year,” Lugo said. “They’re going to find a way. As an educator, that’s all you want in life is to teach kids how to overcome that.”
Asked what his message is to Dillon moving forward, Lugo said, “I hope he plays again. We talked a little bit about keeping him in school. His older brother, Juju, who graduated a couple of years ago, is talking about going back to school. They want to play together. I hope he goes and plays JC because I think it will be good for him to put the pads on and go out under terms.”
— Darren Sabedra
LOS GATOS: IT’S STILL GRAVY
After Los Gatos defeated Wilcox in late October, the Wildcats essentially clinched a league championship, something coach Mark Krail said was the ultimate goal, as it is every season for his program,
He calls the section, regional and state championships “gravy,” a bonus to what happened during the regular season.
Did Krail still believe that after his team routed Wilcox on Friday, an outcome that handed Los Gatos its 16th CCS title, a spot in a NorCal regional and a lane to its first state championship?
Yes, he did.
“Yeah, this is kind of gravy,” Krail said on Sunday. “That doesn’t mean we’re going to take this lightly or that we’re not going to play our tails off, but everything from this point on is a bonus. Everything after the night we beat Menlo-Atherton (to end the regular season) was a bonus.”
Krail and his players said having that kind of attitude has helped the team stay relaxed as the stakes have gotten higher.
“Who doesn’t like gravy, since we just had Thanksgiving,” running back Boxer Kopcsak-Yeung asked. “We’ve got two more games of gravy.”
— Joseph Dycus
MCCLYMONDS: WHEN PETERS LEARNED BEAM’S SECRET
McClymonds coach Michael Peters, 55, will retire at the end of this season as the elder statesman of coaches in the Oakland Athletic League, the architect of a team that has dominated the OAL for over a decade.
But back in the early 1990s, Peters was another assistant coach in a league obsessed with dethroning John Beam’s similarly dynastic Skyline team that won 15 league titles from the late 1980s to early 2000s.
Beam, now the longtime head coach at Laney College, where he received national acclaim after starring in the Netflix documentary “Last Chance U,” was among many friends who attended Peters’ last home game Saturday night. Mack routed Oakland Tech for another Silver Bowl championship.
“When he was coming up, he was one of the only coaches who asked me, ‘What’s the secret? What do you do?” Beam said. “So I spent hours talking to him and (former McClymonds coach) Alonzo Carter about things you can do to help your program grow.”
And what was that secret?
“You have to put the same amount of time off the field into these young people as you do on it,” Beam said. “You’ve got to prove to them that you love them. … Sometimes it needs to be tough love, and that they need to step away until they understand what a privilege it is to be out there.”
Beam said Peters has followed the same formula off the field that Beam did while turning Skyline into a powerhouse.
“You have to be available 24 hours a day to these young men, and there’s a lack of resources,” Beam said about the coaching challenges at an Oakland public school. “We’re going to do more with less, and give more to get more.”
— Joseph Dycus
PITTSBURG: ALL IN THE FAMILY FOR SHAW
In an NCS Division I championship game filled with key moments, Bobby Shaw III made the play of the night for Pittsburg.
With the Pirates facing third-and-14 from their 1-yard line early in the second half against San Ramon Valley on Friday, Shaw somehow chased down Marley Alcantara’s deep pass, kept his balance and outraced defenders to the end zone, the 99-yard bomb breaking a tie score and giving Pittsburg a lead it would not surrender.
Shaw’s touchdown also broke his father’s family record for longest TD reception.
Bobby Shaw II, a former All-American at Cal, caught a 90-yard touchdown that clinched the AFC North championship in 2001 for the Pittsburgh Steelers against the Baltimore Ravens.
The younger Shaw’s touchdown tied the high school national record.
— Darren Sabedra