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BELLFLOWER, Ca. – Of course there as good reason why, of all of the options, I elected to attended Huntington Beach Ocean View’s 3A semifinal at St John Bosco Friday night.

I had a hunch it could be the most exciting of the CIF Southern Section playoffs being contested.

That hunch, I confidently suggest, proved correct.

The host and top seed Braves got 43 points from McDonald’s All-America guard Isaac Hamilton and needed every one of those to hang on – literally – for an 89-87 victory over a club that strafed their defense with 35 shots from behind the 3-point arc.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – Oh, yes . . . we’ve now entered the realm of the very good games, across the board realm of the high school playoffs on the CIF Southern and L.A. City sections.

The Southern Section’s divisions 1 and 2 are into the quarterfinals Friday night, with the remainder of the Southern Section’s divisions are into their semifinals, as is the City Section’s Division I.

Let’s take a look at some of those Friday night matchups, all of which are scheduled to tip at 7, as well as the City Division I semifinals that will be played Saturday evening at Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson:

SOUTHERN SECTION

 1AA: No.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – Here we go, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen:

My look at the second week of the CIF’s Southern and L.A. City sections’ hoops playoffs.

And I’ll start with the toughest division of them all as Tuesday’s second-round (Round of 16 for L.A. City and first four Southern Section divisions) games rapidly approach . . .

SOUTHERN SECTION

  1AA: Top seed Santa Ana Mater Dei (at Downey Warren), No. 2 Long Beach Poly (home to Lakewood Mayfair) and No. 6 Etiwanda (home to Temecula Great Oak) shouldn’t be too severely challenged en route to Friday’s quarterfinal round.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – Sorry for the delay in putting this up but here are some observations about the fields and brackets for the CIF Southern Section and L.A. City boy’s hoops playoffs . . .

As had been anticipated, the Southern Section’s 1AA 32-team bracket shapes up as the most competitive in either section.

In reality, there are probably seven of the best 15 teams in Southern California in this division. Those included top seed Santa Ana Mater, followed (in order of seed) by Long Beach Poly, Corona Centennial, Mission Viejo, Rancho Cucamonga, Etiwanda and L.A.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – The CIF Southern Section and L.A. City playoffs get under way this coming week.

The following is my Top 15 rankings for teams from those sections – and include ONLY those teams that I watched in person during the regular season.

Among those I didn’t see in the regular season were Riverside JW North and Los Angeles Pacific Hills.

So here we go:

1.Santa Ana Mater Dei (CIF SS 1AA);

2. Torrance Bishop Montgomery (SS 4AA);

3. Long Beach Poly (SS 1AA);

4.

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