Frank Burlison

MISSION VIEJO, CA – If were wondering how many times the outcome of a basketball game can hang in the final 3.5 seconds of regulation, you’ve now a pretty good clue – assuming you were among those in the Capistrano Valley High gymnasium Wednesday night.

Eventually, the host Cougars prevailed over Tesoro, 62-60, with the aid of a four-minute overtime in the South Coast league boys’ opener.

Seniors Efe Gucoglu (a second-year exchange student from Turkey) and Jackson Gray – who, with his brother, Blake, was once enrolled at Tesoro – scored 22 and 21 points, respectively, as Coach Brian Mulligan’s team improved its overall record to 13-4.

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SANTA ANA, CA – “Momentum”, in sports (like pretty much in every other aspect of life), can be fickle.

Tuesday night, in a Crestview League boys basketball game at Foothill High, it was down-right abrupt in its switch of allegiance.

The host Knights – having doubled the score on visiting Villa Park Spartans – had already gone 10-deep in substitutes as the fourth quarter began with multiple reserves on the floor.

But the Spartans, who had missed 20 of 29 shots from the floor and committed 13 turnovers over the first 24 minutes, finally started knocking in jump shots – with a few nifty drives mixed in.

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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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