Girls volleyball playoff brackets will be released Friday at 3 p.m.
The questions that CIF Southern Section coaches and everyone else that follows the sport has, is …
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How many teams will be in Division 1? And who will they be?
The size of Division 1 and which teams are in it will affect which teams are in Division 2. And which teams are in Division 2 will affect which teams are in Division 3 and so on down to Division 11.
Last year, 11 teams were placed into a Division 1 16-team bracket. Four teams had first-round byes.
In 2024, Division 1 was an eight-team group. A pool-play format was used.
The CIF Southern Section uses the Massey Ratings System rankings of CIF-SS girls volleyball teams to place teams into playoff divisions and to seed them within those divisions.
The most-recently released ratings, as of Oct. 5, had Mater Dei ranked No. 1 in Southern Section girls volleyball. Other Orange County teams in the top eight were No. 4 Los Alamitos, No. 5 Newport Harbor and No. 6 Santa Margarita. Orange Lutheran was at No. 10, Crean Lutheran at No. 15.
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CIF-SS assistant commissioner Mike Middlebrook was still evaluating rankings and considering potential Division 1 group size Wednesday.
Every playoff division’s bracket must have as its No. 1-seeded team an automatic qualifier. An automatic qualifier is a team that finished high enough in its league’s final standings to be an automatic qualifier, i.e. the top two teams in a four-team league like the Trinity League or the top three teams in a five-team or six-team league.
A team can qualify for the playoffs as an at-large team if it has an overall record of .500 or better. No division can have as its No. 1-seeded team an at-large team. Each division must start with an automatic qualifier.
Division 1 will be no larger than a 16-team group, according to the CIF-SS playoff bulletin. Division 2-11 will be 16-to-32 team brackets.
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