Frank Burlison

ANAHEIM, Ca. – The first set of CIF Southern Section boys’ basketball championship games were played Thursday night in the Anaheim Convention Center Arena.

They might have meant a lot of things to a lot of folks in the building – remember, three teams went home with titles; the others left with the frustrating of coming oh-so-close to bagging that championship hardware.

But one thing the three contests had in common was that they were anything but offensive “works of art”.

Depending on your perspective – sort of the hoops’ version of “the glass if half full or half empty” kind of deal – the games were either examples of defense at its best or shooting at something well short of that.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. –  The three best teams in Southern California are among the four hooking in up in CIF Southern Section 1AA semifinals Tuesday night at Mater Dei and Long Beach Poly high schools, respectively.

And the fourth of those squads certainly is plenty potent as well.

The Etiwanda Eagles, led by terrific junior point guard Jordan McLaughlin, and future major college seniors in Sheldon Blackwell (unsigned and the best perimeter defender in Southern California) and Tim Myles (a 6-foot-7 transfer from Eastvale Roosevelt who signed with the University of New Mexico in November), visit the LBC for their 7 o’clock tilt with the host Jackrabbits.

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REDONDO BEACH, Ca. – Some of the players will have major impacts on the high school scene as soon as nine or so months from now.

Others may not make their marks as preps until two, three, four or more years later.

Whatever the case may be for the 200 or so players, currently in fourth to eighth grades, on display Saturday and Sunday, the first-ever Pangos Junior All-American Camp was mostly a terrific playing and viewing experience for those who showed up at Redondo High either or both days.

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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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