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BELLFLOWER – The Harvard-Westlake and St. John Bosco High squads came into their State Southern Open regional semifinal with enough high-quality underclassmen to already be considered the choices to be the Southland’s top two teams coming into the 2023-24 season.

But let’s don’t get ahead of ourselves, Frank.

The teams the Wolverines and host Braves put on the floor Saturday night were dang good, too.

But only one could be good enough to get out of the building with a win to earn a spot in Tuesday night’s regional final against a Corona Centennial program that’s been the state’s best for three seasons.

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RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – After grinding out a 50-47 State Southern Regional Division II victory over visiting San Gabriel Academy Thursday night, the Tesoro High Titans will have just one Friday practice to prepare for its next opponent, also at home, on Saturday evening.

Not that Coach Steve Garrett’s team will need a whole lot of prep time for the Orange Lutheran Lancers in their 7 o’clock semifinal, though:

That’s the team that it knocked off in the CIF Southern Section 3AA championship game last Saturday night at Edison High in Huntington Beach – the same opponent the Titans spent the better part of week preparing for.

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The CIF Southern Section’s Division 1 champions from the past two seasons hook up in a State Southern Regional Division I second-round game Thursday night at St. Bernard High in Playa del Rey.

The host Vikings (22-8) knocked off JSerra in the 2022 CIF SS D-1 finale.

And the Mater Dei Monarchs (28-6) toppled Etiwanda in this season’s D-1 finale Saturday afternoon in the Honda Center.

The Monarchs had to recover from a nine-point, halftime deficit to visiting La Costa Tuesday night to prevail, 70-66, in overtime, in their regional opener.

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DOWNEY – Less than 24 hours after wrapping up their overpowering run to a CIF Southern Section 3AA championship Saturday afternoon, the Pius X-St. Matthias Academy boys’ basketball coaches and players learned that the CIF State office did them no favors relative to the Southern Regional playoffs.

The Warriors, after whacking La Serna, 79-48, at Colony High to complete a five-game, their beatdown of their playoff competition – by a margin of 29.8 ppg – were moved up into the 16-team Division II regional bracket.

But, after Coach Donte Archie’s club improved to 30-4 with its 22^nd consecutive win, 70-62 over perennial L.A.

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LAGUNA NIGUEL – The opening round of CIF Southern Regional boys’ basketball playoff action gets underway Tuesday night, in all but the Open Division.

With just five teams in the Open (as is the case in the Northern playoffs), the Southern Section’s West Ranch (29-2) visits San Diego Wednesday night to take on that section’s Open champion, St. Augustine (27-4).

The winner of that clash visits Corona Saturday evening for a semifinal with three-time Southern Section Open champion Centennial – which edged St. John Bosco, 58-56, in last Saturday night’s title game in the Honda Center.

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