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  LAGUNA NIGUEL, Ca. – My reactions to the 2019 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Tournament bracket:

  *The top seeds (Duke/East, Virginia/South, North Carolina/Midwest and Gonzaga/West) were clear cut – especially after Auburn beat the snot out of Tennessee in the SEC final Sunday.

  *The strongest “1-2 seed combination”, IMHO, is North Carolina and Kentucky in the Midwest.

  SEC Tourney champion and No. 5 seed Auburn and Big 12 Tourney winner and No. 6 seed Iowa State seem the obvious biggest obstacles to a UNC-UK regional showdown in Kansas City on March 31.

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  DOWNEY – Some of the better players from the Class of 2019 that are still in search of a college destination were on display Saturday at St. Pius X-St. Matthias Academy during the Beach City Hoops (in conjunction with Gamepoint-OC) Unsigned Senior Showcase.

    There was a plethora of superb jump shooters in attendance, notably Mission League products Vince Fier (Mission Hills Alemany) and Alex Blanco (Notre Dame-Sherman Oaks) along with Quincy Adams (Hollywood).

  A cluster of extremely quick point guards were in the building, too, led by the dynamic John Clausell (Leuzinger/PICTURED) who put on his usual display of end-to-end acceleration and putting-right-in-shooters’-hands playmaking.

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  ETIWANDA – “Big O” has been locked in as Chino Hills senior Onyeka Okongwu’s moniker for about as long as he’s been a dominant force on the high school hoops scene – basically, since November of his freshman year.

   But, after leading his team to a stunning, come-from-behind, 49-47 victory over host and top seed Etiwanda Tuesday night in the State Southern Regional DI final, it’s apparent that at least one other tag would be appropriate for the 6-foot-9, USC-bound Okongwu:

  Mr. March.

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  NORWALK, Ca. – National ratings for middle-school players are always more than a bit nebulous, at best.

   That being established, it’s difficult imagining there being a more dominant eighth-grader anywhere than was Baye Fall during the seventh Pangos Junior All-American Camp that wrapped up Sunday afternoon at Cerritos Community College.

   The 6-foot-9 Fall, who attends Lincoln Charter School in Denver and came to the U.S. from Senegal about a year or so ago, crushed the competition and capped his two-day performance with 13 points, 14 rebounds and six blocked shots (stats courtesy @devin_ugland) in the “Best of the Best” all-star game.

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  RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – They’re future college basketball programs may have been battling one another some 68 or so miles away in Westwood.

   But, while UCLA eventually knocked off its USC counterpart in overtime Thursday night, a future Bruin and soon-to-be Trojan teammate to give their Santa Margarita High team to another playoff victory.

   USC-bound Max Agbonkpolo (28) and Jake Kyman (22) – who signed with UCLA in November – combined for 50 points as the Eagles toppled El Cajon Foothills Christian, 76-66, in the second round of the State Southern Regional Division I playoffs.

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