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LAGUNA NIGUEL – Here’s 13 of the “next best” of the senior class of boys’ basketball players in Southern California.

They may not have made the BurlisonOnBasketball Top 13 (including Player of the Year) cut but each member of the next group had a strong senior season and helped his team enjoy considerable success.

For want of a snappier (or more original) tag, I’m calling this the “Under-the-Radar” team – in large part because none of the players is of yet committed to a college for the 2022-23 basketball and academic year.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL – Southern California’s most outstanding boys’ basketball player in the senior class this past season was easy to identify anytime you watched the region’s best team in action.

And all of those who watched Corona Centennial, multiple times, roll to a 33-1 record en route to CIF Southern Section and Regional Open championships, and the program’s first-ever state title, had plenty of opportunity to watch Donovan Dent demonstrate why there wasn’t a better basketball anywhere in the region in any class.

The 6-foot-2 Dent (pictured), who signed a National Letter of Intent with the University of New Mexico last November, turned in these kinds of performances all season:

*In the March 12 State Open final vs.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – Six first-round NCAA Tournament games may not be the all-encompassing sample size needed to make a definitive declaration on the topic.

But the six representatives of the Big 12 made a collective and pointed on-court demonstration Thursday and Friday as to their conference may be the strongest in men’s college hoops this season.

They won their six games by an average margin of 23 points, with No. 1 regional seeds Baylor (East/85-49 vs. Norfolk State) and Kansas (Midwest/83-56 vs. Texas Southern) pounded their No.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL – Coach Josh Giles’ Centennial High Huskies wrapped up their two-season run as the west’s best boys’ basketball team Saturday night with their 59-50 win over Modesto Christian in Sacramento’s Golden 1 Center.

The sport being what it is today – where “player movement” is seemingly always in play – it’s tough to be too bold when in comes to making projections on a season that isn’t set to begin eight about eight months.

But it’s not exactly going out on a long limb to say that it will take a heck of a team to keep the Huskies from being the west’s best in 2022-23, as well.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – Perusing the NCAA men’s basketball tournament and bracket – after hanging with the influenza the better part of two days:

*If the goal of “previous seasons’ tournament performances don’t enter into the current season’s selection/seeding process” (which I think is a “fair” approach), then it’s “Mission Accomplished” for the 2022 version of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Committee.

The 14-member Big Ten Conference got a tournament-high nine entrants in the 68-team field – as it did in 2021, when those teams went a collective 8-9 with just one of those teams (Michigan, which lost to UCLA in the East Region’s title game) getting to the “second week” of the tournament.

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