Wednesday night's game against College of the Canyons Cougars is for all the marbles. Their fate is in their hands. If they win, they make the playoffs.

This is it. This is the last home game of the season for Santa Monica College. It is also the most important game of the year.

If the Lady Corsairs do not win the game Wednesday night against the College of the Canyon Cougars, they do not make the playoffs; they do not get a shot at the state championship and the season is over. Granted, their last game is on the road at West L A Saturday night, but it would be meaningless as far as the playoffs are concerned.

The complexities with all the nuances that go into how a team gets into the playoffs is beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, this is essentially how it stacks up.

There are 13 conferences in California. The conferences are geographically divided between northern and southern California. There are seven south conferences and six north conferences. The reason for the disparity is that there are more schools located in the south than there are in the north.

In the south, 20 teams make the playoffs. The first place teams are guaranteed a spot. After that, second and third place teams in the divisions are considered by a committee based upon the the best division record, overall record, strength of schedule, state and division ranking and other criterion.

In the north, 18 teams make the playoffs using the same criterion.

This makes a total of 38 teams who compete for the state championship.

Once the playoffs teams are determined, the top four teams get a first round bye. The remaining 34 are seeded. Naturally, the lower seeds play the higher seeds when the tournament begins. The top four are brought into the rotation after the elimination of the lower seeds.

At this point, there are 16 teams from the north and 16 teams from the south left in the tournament. The north plays the north and the south plays the south until the group is pared down to the final four. Once at the final four level, the remaining teams are matched up according to their original seed, north against south, to determine the state champion.

The SMC playoff picture is somewhat simpler to understand. Santa Monica College, College of the Canyons, and Citrus College are in the Western State - South Conference. College of the Canyons is in first place and will win the conference because they cannot end the season with a record with less than 10-2. They are currently undefeated with a record of 10-0.

With a conference record of 7-3, SMC is in second place with two games left to play. To "insure" a playoff spot, they must win both games because Citrus College is in third place with a record of 7-4.

This is where it gets slightly complicated. If Citrus wins their last game, and they should because they play the Bakersfield Renegades who are 1-9, they end the season with a division record of 8-4. If SMC loses either of the last two games, then they also end up with an 8-4 record; but Citrus advances to the playoffs, if for no other reason, Citrus' overall record of 21-10 is better than SMC's record of 11-14. Unfortunately, SMC cannot get one of the four leftover spots because their overall record is not as good as other schools when compared to others in the south conferences.

So it is do or die for the Santa Monica College Lady Corsairs tomorrow night. There is little doubt, win or lose, this will be the most intense, exciting and hard fought game of the year. Head Coach Lydia Strong said "we have a couple kids hurting. Maye [Danganan] banged her hand. But we can win. It's not out of the question, we can beat them."

Rayshandra Ray said that the loss to Canyons was because they allowed the Cougars to intimidate them. "This time we are going to focus as a team and not let them get in our heads," she said. Monica Dagan said "It will be the game of the season. We are going to the playoffs." Karlia Batalla said "We are going to end up in second place. We are not going to back down from them. It will sum up our whole season."