Every coach tries to predict which team will be the opponent in the first round of the playoffs.
Todd Dixon made his final attempt at it Sunday, the day CIF-Southern Section basketball playoff brackets were released. Dixon is leaving El Toro after this season to take the men’s basketball coaching position at Santiago Canyon College.
El Toro will play at Corona del Mar in a Division 1A first-round game Wednesday. Is that what Dixon expected?
“He’s our bracketologist,” said Dixon, nodding toward longtime assistant coach Tom McCanna on Sunday at CIF-SS headquarters in Los Alamitos where coaches arrived to get playoff tickets and other playoff-related items.
So how did the bracketologist and head coach do?
“We thought Corona del Mar was a possibility,” Dixon said. “Or Kaiser (of Fontana), which finished first in its league (Sunkist League) or Mayfair, which finished first, too (Suburban League). Corona del Mar was definitely on our radar.”
Jump stops around Orange County boys basketball:
• El Toro goes into the playoffs with a momentum boost. The Chargers, who are 18-9 overall and finished fourth in the five-team South Coast League with a 3-5 league record, defeated Tesoro and Trabuco Hills last week, the final week of the regular season.
• All five South Coast League teams are in the playoffs: San Clemente, Trabuco Hills, Aliso Niguel, El Toro and Tesoro.
• All four Crestview League teams are in the playoffs: Esperanza, Canyon, Foothill and Yorba Linda.
• Foothill is struggling as it hits the playoffs, having lost three league games in a row, to Esperanza, Canyon and Yorba Linda. Foothill will play at Calabasas in the 1AA first round Friday.
• Tesoro lost five of its final six regular-season games.
• Sonora has won eight in a row and 15 of its last 16 games since a 64-63 loss to La Habra, the Raiders’ only Freeway League loss.
• Other teams taking large win streaks into the playoffs include: Crean Lutheran, seeded second in Division 3AA, has won 12 in a row; Ocean View has won 14 in a row; and Godinez has won 15 in a row.
• Orange Lutheran, which did not qualify for the playoffs, lost its final nine games. Seven of those were Trinity League games. The other two were to state-ranked Sheldon of Sacramento and Long Beach Poly, which is an Open Division team.
• Pacifica went 1-9 in the Empire League. The Mariners finished the regular season 14-12, so their above-.500 overall record was good enough to get them an at-large berth in Division 3A. They play at Sunbelt League champion Temescal Canyon of Lake Elsinore (17-8) in the first round Wednesday.
• The county’s top five scorers in the regular season were, in order: 1. Kezie Okpala, Esperanza, 29.95 points per game; 2. Trey Smith, Saddleback Valley Christian, 27.32; 3. Dominick Harris, Pacifica Christian, 26.04; 4. Alex Bray, University, 25.38; 5. Romulo Howard, Savanna, 24.24.
• The top four seeded teams in the Open Division are, in order, Sierra Canyon of Chatsworth, Chino Hills, Mater Dei and Bishop Montgomery of Torrance. If they advance to the semifinals it will be Sierra Canyon vs. Bishop Montgomery and Mater Dei vs. Chino Hills – just like it was in last year’s Open Division semifinals in which Sierra Canyon beat Bishop Montgomery, 78-69, and Chino Hills walloped Mater Dei, 102-54. This season’s Open Division semifinals will be played as a doubleheader at USC’s Galen Center on Feb. 24. The first game will start at 7 p.m.
• Admission to CIF-SS boys basketball playoff games through the semifinals is $10 for adults and $5 for students with valid student identification and for children of ages 5-13.
• All divisions except for the Open Division and Division 5AA play first-round games Wednesday and second-round games Friday. The Open Division and 5AA play first-round games Friday.
• Division 5AA has wild-card games Wednesday to reduce the field to 16 teams for the first round. Division 5AA is the only 16-team bracket of the 12 CIF-SS playoff divisions.
• Mater Dei has won 34 league championships in Gary McKnight’s 35 seasons as the Monarchs coach. That one season in which a McKnight-coached Mater Dei team did not win a league championship was 1987-88, when Bishop Amat of La Puente won the Angelus League title.
Contact the writer: sfryer@scng.com
