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LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA – Five high-profile “showcase” events were held this past weekend, and each included at least a couple of the teams in the top 15ish range in the updated BurlisonOnBasketball SoCal team rankings.

The most notable of those, of course, was the eight-game Take Flight Challenge at Redondo Union.

It played host to the remarkable – and exhausting; even for those just watching game – game pitting No. 2 Harvard-Westlake and No. 3 Bishop Montgomery, pulled off by the former in three overtimes, 74-66.

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REDONDO BEACH – My measure for evaluating the quality of a “regular-season” sporting event is this:

Imagine said game taking place in, say, a Super Bowl (if an NFL game), National championship game (if a college basketball or football game) or NBA final series (if a regular-season game).

Would the circumstances and/or outcome of the contest lead it to be universally compared to the “greatest” of those events ever played?

With that in mind, how well-played, dramatic and “memorial” was the Take Flight Challenge boys’ basketball game between two of the best three teams in the state Saturday night at Redondo Union High?

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SANTA ANA, CA – Trinity League boys’ basketball “statement wins” don’t come any louder than they do in Mater Dei’s Meruelo Center.

And, when they’re made by someone other than the host Monarchs, they’re more like a sonic boom.

And that’s because, since the league was formed in 2006 (with JSerra and Orange Lutheran replacing Loyola and Bishop Amat), no Trinity member knocked off a Gary McKnight-coached team in the (metaphorically speaking) “House that Gary built”.

They hadn’t, that is, until Friday night, when the St.

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NORWALK – BurlisonOnBasketball’s top-ranked Corona Centennial and No. 10 Sherman Oaks Notre Dame squads play in the featured contest in “The Elite Invitational” Saturday at Cerritos Community College.

The Huskies (13-3, without a loss to a California-based program since 2021) meet the Knights (10-6 prior to their Friday night Mission League game with Loyola) at 7 o’clock.

Opening the event, at 3 o’clock, at Westchester and St. Monica, with No. 7 Rancho Christian and Lynwood – led by freshman phenom Jason Crowe Jr. – hooking up at 5.

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NEWPORT BEACH – Henderson (NV) Liberty High – which captured the championship of the Platinum Division of the Classic at Damien last week – takes on of Northern California’s top teams in the 8 o’clock finale of the five-game, BSNSports Showcase at Pacifica Christian High.

Liberty, led by the top junior point guard in the country (Dedan Thomas Jr.), faces Modesto Christian and its San Diego State-bound point guard, B.J. Davis.

Play begins at 2 p.m., with Mayfair facing Las Vegas Desert Pines.

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