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LAS VEGAS – The Corona (CA) Centennial and Bishop Gorman programs used different approaches Friday in the Orleans Hotel Arena in an attempt to get to Saturday’s Platinum Division championship game in the Tarkanian Classic.

Both succeeded.

The Centennial Huskies (9-2), under Coach Josh Giles, continued to make a mockery of the tag “undergo” while holding off Santa Ana Mater Dei, 63-53, in the first of those Friday semifinals.

And Coach Grant Rice’s Bishop Gorman team put itself into position to complete the program’s defense of the division championship while rallying (from five points down with a bit more than 2 1/2 minutes to play) to knock off two-time, California Open Division runner-up Sacramento Sheldon, 75-66.

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LAS VEGAS – Sixteen teams earned “trips” Thursday to the Orleans Hotel Arena for Friday semifinals in four divisions of the Tarkanian Classic.

And I use the term “trips” quite loosely, because the Orleans is where the players, coaches and family of the bulk of the teams in the Grant Rice/Dinos Trigonis-fronted event are staying this week, with Bishop Gorman serving as the “host school” and primary games’ site.

The Platinum (in this case, like most hoops’ tournaments, meaning best) Division provide the most compelling of the semifinals, with a Southern California Showdown of sorts in the Corona Centennial-Santa Ana Mater Dei clash at 4 o’clock and the host Gaels – the event’s defending champions – facing Northern California powerhouse Sacramento Sheldon at 5:30.

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LAS VEGAS – The Southern California-based programs were 5-zip during Wednesday’s first-round action in the Platinum Division of the Tarkanian Classic at Bishop Gorman High.

Two of those squads got stunning deep-range shooting efforts to advance to Thursday’s quarterfinal action:

*Corona Centennial (7-2) continued its string of “upsets”, knocking off the top-ranked team from Pennsylvania in Philadelphia Neumann Goretti, 68-64, as freshman guard Jared McCain (pictured) buried eight 3s – seven after intermission – while scoring 30 points.

*And San Diego State-bound guard Keith Dinwiddie knocked in seven shots from behind the arc while continuing the sizzling start to his senior season as L.A.

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LA VERNE, Ca – The fourth Classic at Damien (Dec. 26, 27, 28&30), to be held in the Damien High Athletic and Event Centers, as well as on several area campuses, will showcase some of the very best players the Class of 2020 has to offer.

And 10 of the athletes in the five-division, 80-team event signed National Letters of Intent with NCAA-designated programs last in November.

The programs for eight of those players will be competing in the Platinum Division, the toughest post-Christmas tournament division anywhere in the country.

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LAS VEGAS – The first day of the Tarkanian Classic, at Bishop Gorman High, ended with more than just a bit of optimism for the UCLA coaching staff and the Bruins’ followers.

Six-foot-five Daishen Nix, who signed a National Letter of Intent last month to enroll at Westwood in the summer, put all of his highly refined skill on display Tuesday night while scoring 39 points in Las Vegas Trinity International’s 71-57 victory over San Antonio-based Cornerstone Christian in a first-round game of the Pangos Elite 8 “prep school” team tournament.

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