LAGUNA NIGUEL – CIF Southern Section boys’ Open Division basketball action gets underway Friday night, with two traditional divisional powerhouses – and a couple of division “newcomers” – making road trips for their games.
*Corona Centennial (20-10), the winner of the past three Open sectional titles, travels to Studio City to play Harvard-Westlake (26-3) in a Pool A contest set to tip at 7 o’clock.
The Huskies (whose losses surpassed the nine of the 2022-23 Sherman Oaks Notre Dame as the most an Open team has taken into the playoffs) lost to Harvard-Westlake, in Corona, in last season’s State Open Regional title game.
The Wolverines returned three starters (Trent Perry, Robert Hinton, and Nikolas Khamenia), plus their 2022-23 top reserve, Christian Horry) from that game.
Centennial returned just one starter from a year ago in 6-foot-4, UCLA-bound Eric Freeny but added what turned out to be a McDonald’s All-American in 6-8, Sage Hill-transfer Carter Bryant, who signed with the University of Arizona in November.
Perry (who signed with USC three months ago) and Khamenia – one of the region’s elite juniors – scored 25 and 20 points, respectively, in their team’s 80-61 win over the Huskies last March 7.
*The Sierra Canyon Trailblazers (24-2), winners of the 2019 and ’20 Open sectional titles, are the only program to participate in each Open sectional playoff since it debuted in 2014.
And Coach Andre Chevalier’s team will begin Open play when visiting Bellflower to play St. John Bosco (23-5).
Coach Matt Dunn’s Braves (who lost, on a buzzer-beating dunk by Aaron McBride, to Centennial in last year’s Open title game in the Honda Center) are opening with a home game for the first time in this, their sixth Open bid in seven seasons.
*JSerra (24-4) is making its Open debut and will be in Eastvale to take on No. 2 overall seed Roosevelt (27-2).
It’s a rematch of a Nov. 28 game in which the Lions handed the Mustangs one of their two losses while prevailing in two overtimes, 90-76, at Redondo Union High during the Ryse Williams/Pac Shores Challenge.
Seniors Sebastian Rancik and Aidan Fowler (pictured) scored 32 and 31 points, respectively, for JSerra while 6-5 junior Brayden Burries led Roosevelt with 29 points despite picking up his fourth foul late in the third quarter.
*And, a year after winning the CIF Southern Section’s 3AA title and losing at Orange Lutheran in the second round of the State Southern Regional D-I second round, Downey’s St. Pius X/St. Matthias Academy Warriors (22-5) take a dip into Open waters for the first time while visiting Santa Ana to take on Mater Dei (26-2).
The host Monarchs missed the Open for the first-time last season but responded by beating Etiwanda in the Division 1 championship game in the Honda Center before losing at Notre Dame in a regional semifinal.
Four of the Warriors’ wins came while winning the top division of the Dec. 18-21 Tarkanian Classic in Las Vegas, where 6-6, University of San Francisco-bound Tyrone Riley earned Most Outstanding Player.
Coach Gary McKnight’s Mater Dei team suffered the most significant, pre-playoff personnel loss in the division vis the surgery on the right foot undergone by 6-8 Brannon Martinson on Feb. 2, two days after suffering the injury in the second quarter of his team’s home win over St. John Bosco.
Martinson, the Monarchs’ most productive player as well as one of the best sophomore prospects in the west – and beyond – hopes to return to play as soon as the Section 7 event in Arizona June 21-23.
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