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SACRAMENTO – The Chino Hills High basketball team found itself down by 10 points six minutes into the game and trailing at intermission – by two points – for only the second time in 35 games this season Saturday night in the Sleep Train Arena.

I write that for those who might have forgotten those things after watching the final 16 minutes turn into the same kind of fast-paced, high-flying and – oh-so-often – breath-taking style play that the Huskies established as uniquely their own this season.

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SACRAMENTO – The final half of the six California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) boys’ basketball championship games will be played in the Sleep Train Arena Saturday.

And action wraps up at 8 p.m. with the headliner of the Thursday-Saturday 12-game (girls included) schedule, the Open Division championship game pitting Southern representative Chino Hills and its Northern counterpart, Concord De La Salle.

The De La Salle is 31-2 in A.J. Kuhle’s first season as the head coach at his alma mater (Class of 2000), with only losses to Las Vegas Bishop Gorman (in a second-round, Dec.

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SACRAMENTO – Each of the three California Interscholastic Federation boys’ championship games played Thursday in the Sleep Train Arena featured multiple standout performers.

Examples:

*The impressive efforts by freshmen Adam Campos (12 points and eight rebounds) and Kobe Keiner (a critical pair of free throws down the stretch) in Alameda St. Joseph Notre Dame’s 55-50 victory over Playa del Rey St. Bernard in the Division V finale;

*Senior guard Robert Fuller’s 15-point, four-assist and two-steal effort that helped St. Bernard stay close throughout;

*Left-handed junior forward Tydus Verhoeven showed off his variety of skills while scoring 11 points with 12 rebounds and four assists as Manteca knocked off Chino Hills Ayala, 60-51, for the Division III championship;

*Ayala (which finished 33-4 and, like 29-6 Manteca, was playing in its first state title game) rallied from an early 17-point deficit to get to within three points early in the fourth quarter, got a strong effort by one of California’s best unsigned seniors, 6-5 John Edgar, who scored 21 points – with four 3s – to go with six rebounds and four steals;

*And 6-6 senior Mitchell Mykhaylov picked a perfect moment to turn in one of his best efforts for Encino Crespi, scoring 19 points with 13 rebounds in the Celts’ 68-53, Division I-championship win over Berkeley in the final game played Thursday night.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – The Chino Hills Huskies are just one victory away from wrapping up a season a perfection this Saturday night in Sacramento.

Coach Steve Baik’s crew earned the trip north via its latest dismantling of one of the state’s best squads, 84-62, over No. 2-ranked Bishop Montgomery before a standing-room-only crowd in the Walter Pyramid on the Long Beach State Campus this past Saturday in the Southern Regional Open Championship game.

The 34-0 Huskies, who play Northern champion Concord De La Salle at 8 o’clock in the Kings’ Sleep Train Arena, beat seven playoff foes (sectional and regional) in Open competition by an average margin of 30.2 points.

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LONG BEACH, Ca. – The matchups set for the State Southern Regional boys finals are such that the collective six games, split between the Walter Pyramid at Long Beach State and Colony High in Ontario, can be called “Rematch Saturday”.

Take a gander:

*The Open Division title game (8:30 p.m./Walter Pyramid), pitting 33-0 Chino Hills and 28-2 Bishop Montgomery, is a rematch of a contest played on Jan. 30 at Cerritos College.

The Huskies, despite falling behind 17-6 and later trailing by eight points with about six minutes to go, prevailed, 71-67, in front of an elbow-to-elbow, packed building;

*Crespi and Redondo, the top seeds in Division I who meet for the right to go to Sacramento next week on Saturday at 3 o’clock in the Walt Pyramid, hooked up in Encino March 4.

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