Taking a look around Orange County high school sports:
• The CIF-SS was expected today to send to league representatives its recommendations for playoff groupings that would take effect in the 2014-15 school year. But four schools – Damien of La Verne, Oaks Christian of Westlake Village, St. Bonaventure of Ventura and St. Lucy’s of Glendora – won an arbitration case so they won’t be sent to private-school leagues as had been planned. The CIF-SS office has to reconfigure its playoff grouping plans for which it anticipates a release date of April 30.
• Thus we won’t know until then if the CIF-SS plans, which would be subject to appeal and change, to have Sunset League football remaining in the Southwest Division or if the section suggests that South Coast League football be moved out of the Pac-5 Division.
• The National Football Foundation’s Orange County chapter had its 44th Scholar-Athlete Awards Dinner on Monday at Anaheim Convention Center. This year’s honorees can be found at ocvarsity.com in the football section of the website.
• This is the first year four county boys basketball teams won CIF-SS championships in the same season: Mater Dei, Open Division; Canyon, 2AA; Santa Margarita, 3AA; and JSerra, 4AA. The county has had three CIF-SS boys basketball champions several times, most recently in 2009 when Canyon, Ocean View and Tesoro won section titles.
• After Mater Dei beat Chino Hills and its outstanding Ball brothers, freshman LiAngelo and sophomore Lonzo, Monarchs coach Gary McKnight joked when told there is a younger Ball brother, “Doesn’t he want a Catholic school education? Wait, is what I just said recruiting?”
• Mission Viejo’s Chandler Hutchison would be the leading candidate for county boys basketball player of the year honors if not for the existence of Mater Dei’s Stanley Johnson. Hutchison can score a variety of ways, plays smart, is an aggressive rebounder and is just fine defensively. Hutchison signed with Boise State.
• Recruiting, or “undue influence” as it is called in CIF rules, is illegal. Like so many coaches of elite high school programs, McKnight does not need to recruit and everyone should know that. A talented seventh-grade boys basketball player and his parents – especially his parents – already know that Mater Dei has a pretty decent basketball program.
• The basketball state tournament has a different way to select home teams than does the CIF-Southern Section. In the CIF Southern California Regionals, teams are assigned travel priority numbers. The team with the better travel priority number, with 1 being best, is at home when two teams meet.
• Rachel Pau’u, one of the top players on Rosary’s basketball team, did not play Wednesday in the Royals’ 48-44 loss at Mater Dei of Chula Vista in a CIF Southern California Regionals Division 4 first-round game. Pau’u injured an ankle this past weekend when she was among the Rosary students hurt when a portion of the Servite theater stage collapsed during Rosary’s “Red & Gold” event.
• Both Santa Margarita basketball teams won CIF-SS championships and continued the winning Wednesday in Regional first-round games. Santa Margarita’s girls beat Central of El Centro, 60-37, in Division 3. The Eagles boys team beat Independence of Bakersfield, 64-51.
• Esperanza will play host to Gahr of Cerritos today at 3 p.m. in the championship game of baseball’s Newport Elks Tournament’s Frank Lerner Division, the tournament’s elite division.
• In the Newport Elks’ Foothill Division, Valencia plays Beckman in the championship game today at 3 p.m. In the Orange County Division championship game, Whittier Christian plays Crean Lutheran at Cypress Park in Irvine at 2:45 p.m.
• The Loara Tournament championship baseball game is Saturday at 7 p.m. at La Palma Park’s Glover Stadium/Dee Fee Field. The tournament semifinals were played Thursday.
• Brea Olinda senior Cameron Bishop pitched a no-hitter Wednesday in the Wildcats’ 2-0 win over Hemet in the Elks tournament.
