Acalanes tourney reminded us it’s still very early with team’s showing great talent at times, room for improvement at others. We have another competitive year brewing for NCS/Norcal polo, here are a few tidbits from the tourney:
Miramonte earned the title. They played very well and showed Carondelet can be beat. Miramonte shouldn’t have been seeded 4 (easy to say in hindsight), and their semifinal game vs Carondelet felt like the championship game - a hard fought battle on both sides. We could see this matchup again for NCS Open title, but again, it’s still early…
Acalanes (with a very favorable #2 seed) avoided disaster in squeaking by Davis early to make top 4, finish 4th. If they were seeded 3 or higher very well could have finished 6th or even 7th behind SRV and SHP.
Campo is solid but tight game vs SHP and loss to Miramonte show they need to play their best to beat the best.
SRV had tough draw but battled on to earn 5th. SHP had ups and downs, expect them to continue to improve. Davis is a step below the teams mentioned above.
Putting aside the final tourney places, for teams who played, it felt the top two are Miramonte and Carondelet. Campo third. Then SRV, Acalanes, SHP, in no particular order. Then Davis.
It would have been great to have Soquel there, still have them in top four for Norcal, we shall see!
If the game was that close and Davis played so poorly then my half-educated guess would be that several Davis girls played nursing some injuries or did not play at all. It is hard to have any other explanations based on the previous hs and club encounters. Still, Davis won, right?
And based on what happened during some CIF losses in the past, overconfidence could bite at unexpected times too
Campo beat Arroyo grande by one ( 14 to 13). Srv beat acalanes by 2 and acalanes missing their senior center. This is going to be a tight season. Carondelet @ Soquel tomorrow could be a good one
