Five for Fighting: San Diego gets 5 team in CIF State D1 and D3 fields

The CIF State playoffs kick off in a few hours with Divisions 1 through 5 taking the court on Tuesday night before the Open Division teams have the floor to themselves on Wednesday.

All D1-D5 games start at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

San Diego's top overall team, Carlsbad, rode its 29-2 record to a top-4 seed in the SoCal Regional Open Division and will host No. 5 seed St. Pius X/ St. Matthias Academy at 7 p.m. Wednesday.

After the Lancers, five San Diego teams made the Division 1 bracket.

The CIF runners up, Montgomery, received the No. 4 seed and will face No. 13 Redondo Union, with a chance to potentially again meet St. Augustine in the second round. But the Saints, seeded 5th, will have to face a very good Damien team without seniors Lolo Rudolph and Ian De La Rosa. Rudolph must serve his one-game suspension due to a disqualification in the last game against the Aztecs, while De La Rosa is out for the season due to injury.

La Jolla Country Day received the No. 9 seed in D1. The Open semifinalists will face No. 8 Windward in a rematch of an early season game won by the Wildcats.

Torrey Pines, seeded 10th faces one of the toughest first round matchups in any division, against No. 7 seed Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks, who many insiders believed should have received a much higher seed, or perhaps should be playing in the Open Division.

Finally, Mission Hills received the No. 11 seed and will travel to Corona to face powerhouse Centennial, which features McDonald's All American Carter Bryant.

In Division 2, La Costa Canyon (No. 4) and Cathedral Catholic (No. 6) will host playoff games against St. Bonaventure and La Habra, respectively, while Mission Bay, seeded No. 9, will travel up Interstate 5 to face Corona Del Mar of Newport Beach.

Division 3 is also loaded with San Diego teams, as the No. 6, 7 and 8 teams are Scripps Ranch, University City and San Marcos, respectively. They will face Yeshiva University Los Angeles, Cerritos and Santa Barbara, respectively.

Division 2 runner up Rancho Buena Vista and Division 3 champs Olympian will start out on the road as the No. 13 and No. 14 seeds in Division 3, respectively. The Longhorns will face Bosco Tech out of Rosemead, and the Eagles will travel to the San Fernando Valley to face No. 3 seed Alemany.

Monte Vista is the only San Diego team in the state Division 4 bracket, and received a home game as the No. 8 seed. They will host a tough Estancia team out of Costa Mesa, which lost in the CIF Semifinals bracket against Temecula Valley.

Finally, Mount Miguel received the No. 2 seed in CIF Division 5 and will host throughout the playoffs until the regional semifinals if the No. 1 seed advances. They will start off against No. 15 seed New Designs University Park.

Del Lago Academy, seeded No. 13 in the bracket, travels to East LA to face No. 4 seed Garfield out of the City Section.