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LAGUNA NIGUEL – The Bellflower St. John Bosco High boys’ basketball program made the 2022-23 the best in the eight-year stint of Coach Matt Dunn.

The Braves finished 26-7 and was the outright champion in the Trinity League – marking the first time that a Mater Dei team hasn’t at least shared a league title since 1988.

They played in the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division championship game for the first time, losing on a buzzer-beating dunk by Aaron McBride of three-time Open-winning Corona Centennial at the Honda Center.

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LONG BEACH – The final round of play in the Pangos Best of SoCal League is set for Monday night at McBride High.

Two rounds of league games, starting at 7 o’clock (the gymnasium floor is divided into two courts), will be bailed with the 9 ‘clock “Cream of the Crop” game scheduled to get underway at 9 o’clock.

That “all-star” game will showcase a boatload of guys who were standout underclassmen this past season.

Two of those are the offspring of UCLA and NBA standouts, Trent MacLean (6-foot-9 sophomore/Thousand Oaks) and Tajh Ariza (6-6 freshman/St.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL –  This recently completed boys’ basketball season produced Southern California’s deepest freshman class, relative to on-court performance and long-term potential, in even I-can’t-recall-how-long.

There are at least five players who turned in the consistent caliber of play that, in normal seasons, would lead to providing compelling arguments as to why any of them should be BurlisonOnBasketball’s “Freshman of the Year”.

But the 2022-23 Southland season was anything but normal – even if for nothing but the stunning performance of one freshman alone.

And no California freshman ever – I speak from the experience of seeing pretty much every player who was superb as a freshman in the state, from the mid-1970s or so – turned in the kind of season that Jason Crowe Jr.

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CORONA – The Harvard-Westlake team brought an abrupt – and decisive – end to the three-season dominance of California basketball by the Centennial High program Tuesday night in front of an SRO gathering and Spectrum Television broadcast.

  Coach Josh Giles’ host Huskies came into the Southern Open championship game with an 111-11 record since seniors Jared McCain and Aaron McBride were freshmen.

And three consecutive CIF Southern Section Open championship foes (the most recent, 58-56 over St. John Bosco on Feb. 25 in the Honda Center) were among the 52 consecutive wins over California-based opponents stacked up by the Huskies.

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LONG BEACH – Saturday’s opening day of the Pangos Best of SoCal Spring League at McBride High proved a nice showcase for many of the region’s better players for the 2023-24 season.

And, in the process, it also helped to confirm which of their high school teams are going to be among Southern California’s best next season, as well.

Some examples:

*Brayden Burries and Issac Williamson (pictured, left to right) – ineligible for all their sophomore seasons following their early winter transfer from Riverside Poly – helped show why their new high school program (Roosevelt in Eastvale) will be a Platinum Division participant in the Classic at Damien next December and a strong contender for a spot in the CIF Southern Section’s Open Division playoff field.

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