Five of Orange County’s top 10 teams will be in the same building this weekend as Orange Lutheran High hosts the Tony Matson Memorial Classic on Saturday.
The showcase will begin at 1 p.m. with No. 9 Los Alamitos taking on Sonora, which was in the county top five earlier this season. No. 1 Mater Dei will face off against No. 3 Fairmont Prep in the 2:30 showdown, while No. 4 Brea Olinda and No. 7 Orange Lutheran play in the 4 p.m. contest.
Saturday’s event will be the eighth installment of the Matson Classic, honoring former Lancers girls coach Tony Matson, who passed away in 2009. His daughter, Jessi, will be one of the top athletes competing this weekend. The Orange Lutheran senior guard is the team’s second leading scorer, averaging around 10 points a game.
Only the Mater Dei-Fairmont Prep game is a rematch from 2016. The Monarchs edged the Huskies, 50-47, in last year’s event.
NOTES
•The same nine county teams were included in Monday’s latest Open Division watch list. In alphabetical order: Brea Olinda, Esperanza, Fairmont Prep, Los Alamitos, Mater Dei, Orange Lutheran, Orangewood Academy, Rosary and Troy.
•This week, there will be five games pitting potential Open Division squads off against one another. On Tuesday night, Mater Dei will host Orange Lutheran in a Trinity League matchup, while Esperanza travels to take on Brea Olinda in the Crestview League. On Thursday, Fairmont Prep welcomes Orangewood Academy in a San Joaquin League tilt. The last two games of the Matson Classic will serve as the final pair of potential Open Division meetings.
•No. 10 Aliso Niguel is the only ranked county school not listed on the Open Division watch list. The Wolverines were ranked No. 2 in Division 2A in Monday’s CIF-SS poll behind only Righetti. Aliso boasts three players averaging 10-plus point a game in Suzette Quinlan, Charlotte Vurgun and Madelyn Brauer.
Quinlan scored 27 points in a win over El Toro last week, a game in which she nailed nine shots from beyond the arc. A win at San Clemente on Thursday would go along way in the Wolverines’ hopes of clinching the South Coast League title.
•Segerstrom (16-4, 4-0) can separate itself from the Golden West League pack this week if it can defeat Ocean View and Westminster, which each sit a game back of the Jaguars in league with 3-1 records. Segerstrom hosts the Seahawks on Tuesday and welcomes the Lions on Friday night.
Behind sophomore guard Tati Zazuetta, who is averaging nearly 23 points per game in league, the Jags are in prime position to go up by a full two games in league with four to play after the end of this week.
“She just does all of the little things,” Segerstrom coach Jeffrey Watts said of Zazuetta. “This is my 49th year of coaching, and she’s got the best vision of anybody I’ve ever coached. If she continues to improve, she can be pretty good.”
