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Basketball Long Beach Poly

PREVIEW: Long Beach Poly Heads To Windward, Hoping For CIF Final Berth

The Long Beach Poly girls’ basketball CIF-SS Open Division loss to Corona Centennial on Wednesday posed more questions than answers. Namely, about the Open Division tiebreaker. If the Jackrabbits win at Windward tonight at 7 p.m., it would create a three-way tie in the pool with Poly, Windward, and Centennial all at 2-1, having beaten each other.

After looking at the tiebreaker, Poly coach Carl Buggs shook his head. The tiebreaker rules state that the 2-1 team with the lowest “seed points” among the teams they beat will advance.

“I don’t know what that means, we’re just going to go try to win,” he said with a laugh.

The good news: if Poly wins at Windward, the Jackrabbits would also win the tiebreaker and advance to Friday’s Open Division championship game in the Pyramid at 5 p.m. If Windward wins, they’ll advance to the championship.

That means that despite a complicated tiebreaker, this is essentially a semifinal game. Windward beat Poly earlier this year but the Jackrabbits were without the services of Kalaya Buggs.

Poly would advance with a win because the combined “seed points” of the teams they beat (No. 1 Windward and No. 7 Rosary) would be 8 points. The wins Windward would have (No. 6 Corona Centennial and No. 7 Rosary) would earn 13 points. The wins Corona Centennial would have (No. 3 Poly and No. 7 Rosary) would be 10 points.

PHOTOS: Long Beach Poly vs. Corona Centennial CIF Basketball

Mike Guardabascio
An LBC native, Mike Guardabascio has been covering Long Beach sports professionally for 13 years, with his work published in dozens of Southern California magazines and newspapers. He's won numerous awards for his writing as well as the CIF Southern Section’s Champion For Character Award, and is the author of three books about Long Beach history.
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