Frank Burlison

LAGUNA NIGUEL – Nineteen slots in 10 CIF Southern Section boys’ basketball playoff championship games are at stake Friday night in semifinal action across Southern California.

The only team that has secured a spot in a title game – regardless of the outcome of its Friday night game – is Eastvale Roosevelt.

Top-ranked in the BurlisonOnBasketball SoCal Top 30, Coach Steve Singleton’s 29-2 Mustangs, by way of Pool B victories over JSerra and St. Pius X/St. Matthias Academy, have one of the two reservations for the Open Division championship game set for Feb.

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EASTVALE – Tuesday night the Roosevelt High boys’ basketball team booked its Feb. 23 reservation for Cal Baptist University in Riverside and the CIF Southern Section Open Division championship business it will try to take care of that evening.

Coach Steve Singleton’s Mustangs, despite trailing by as many as eight points late in the third quarter and not taking their first lead until 4:39 remained, held off the visiting St. Pius X/St. Matthias Academy Warriors, 64-59, in an Open Pool B contest.

The victory improved their record to 29-2 and, coupled another JSerra pool-play victory at Mater Dei (67-59), punched their championship appearance tickets for the Feb.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL ­–  Tuesday night’s CIF Southern Section boys’ basketball playoff action will decide which teams advance to Friday’s semifinals:

It will also determine which programs will be bounced from the opportunity to play in the State Southern Regional playoffs in a couple of weeks.

In a pristine illustration of the quality of depth in Divisions 1 and 2AA – I’ll get to the Open Division in a bit – at least five and as many as six squads rated from No.’s 6 to 21 in the most recent BurlisonOnBasketball SoCal Top 30 will lose Tuesday night.

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BELLFLOWER – The top two seeds in the CIF Southern Section boys basketball Open Division playoffs held serve at home Friday night, while two other teams in the division went on the road and made huge, on-court statements at the same time.

Harvard-Westlake (27-3) and Eastvale Roosevelt (28-2), which sit atop the A and B pool, collected 61-51 and 64-51 wins over visiting Corona Centennial and JSerra, respectively.

But, in the other games in those pools Friday night . . .

Sierra Canyon improved to 25-2 by way of its 72-67 victory over host St.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL – CIF Southern Section boys’ Open Division basketball action gets underway  Friday night, with two traditional divisional powerhouses – and a couple of division “newcomers” – making road trips for their games.

*Corona Centennial (20-10), the winner of the past three Open sectional titles, travels to Studio City to play Harvard-Westlake (26-3) in a Pool A contest set to tip at 7 o’clock.

The Huskies (whose losses surpassed the nine of the 2022-23 Sherman Oaks Notre Dame as the most an Open team has taken into the playoffs) lost to Harvard-Westlake, in Corona, in last season’s State Open Regional title game.

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