Open Division Playoff Preview

The brackets for the CIF-SS playoffs were released Sunday and in a interesting first round match up the sons of former NBA stars will be matched against each other on the Mater Dei campus at 7pm on Friday.

The game will pit the Crossroads Roadrunners from Santa Monica against the host Mater Dei Monarchs.

6'10 five star Jr. Shareef O'Neal (Crossroads), the son of Shaq O'Neal, will face off against 7-2 five star Jr. Bol Bol (Mater Dei), the son of Manute Bol. the tallest player (7-7) in NBA history.

Mater Dei (28-1) is the #3 seed in the 16 team Open Division and Crossroads (18-8) is seeded 14th. Mater Dei is heavy favorites to advance to the quarterfinals where they would meet the winner of 6th ranked Roosevelt of Eastvale vs. 11th ranked Redondo Union.

If Roosevelt and Mater Dei take care of business and win their first round games, the site of the quarterfinal will be decided by coin flip with the winner getting the home court advantage.

After that it is neutral, as it was announced yesterday that the semi-finals will be held on Friday the 24th of Feb at the Galen Center on the campus of USC in Los Angeles.

The finals will be at the Honda Center in Anaheim on Saturday night, March 4th.

Photo by Dave Keefer

Sierra Canyon of Chatsworth received the #1 seed and they have the #1 player in the class of 2018, Marvin Bagley III plus 4 experienced seniors and are ranked #2 in the nation by MaxPreps.

Chino Hills is led by the Ball brothers, 6-5 Sr LiAngelo (Gelo) and UCLA recruit and 6-3 soph LaMelo (Melo). Two other starters are 6-4 Sr. Eli Scott, a Loyola Marymount signee, and the "Big O" 6-9 Soph Onyeka Okongwu.

These four along with UCLA freshman PG Lonzo Ball were all starters on last year’s 35-0 defending state and mythical National championship team.

Eight days ago they had their 60 game winning streak come to an end against Oak Hill Academy in the featured game of the 22nd annual Nike Extravaganza at Mater Dei.

Chino Hills led this game from the get go until there was just 2:32 to go in the game when Oak Hill had its first lead of the game.

I am going to tell you now that a sleeper in this tourney could be Roosevelt of Eastvale. I was a spectator and writer at both the Oak Hill game and the Semi-Finals of the Jerry Tarkanian classic in Las Vegas on Dec 19th when Roosevelt gave the Huskies all they could handle.

Roosevelt had a double digit lead for a big part of the game and Chino Hills had to make a big comeback to get the W and I think the team would tell you that was their toughest game of the season.

Mater Dei won the other semi final and faced Chino Hills the following night in the championship game and lost their only game of the season 84-73 but did not put a scare into the Huskies like Roosevelt did.

Mater Dei has the best record in the tourney at 28-1. Chino Hills is 27-1, Sierra Canyon is 25-1 and #4 seed Bishop Montgomery checks in at 23-2.

Santa Margarita (20-6), who finished 2nd to Mater Dei in the Trinity League, is the #5 seed even though they had the 13th best record of the 16 team field.

But because of their tough strength of schedule they moved way up. They lost a close game to LA City’s top team Birmingham and had 2 losses against Mater Dei in league play. They had another loss against a top San Diego team and an upset loss to league foe JSerra Catholic. who they took care of in the return match so ended up with a record of 20-6.

Santa Margarita will have a interesting match up with the top Orange County public school, Esperanza (25-1) of Anaheim. They are the #12 seed because they did not play the caliber of teams that Santa Margarita did.

However, remember when making out your March Madness brackets, the upsets in the first round always seem to be the 5 against the 12.

Other first round match ups:

Sierra Canyon (1) 25-1 vs Heritage Christian (16) 21-5

Centennial (Corona) ( 9 ) 23-6 vs Damien( 8) 25-3

Oak Park (13) 21-6 vs. Bishop Montgomery (4) 23-2

Alemany (7) 24-3 vs Long Beach Poly (10) 21-6

JSerra Catholic (15) 17-9 vs. Chino Hills (2) 27-1

Tip offs are at 7 PM on Friday, Feb 17th. ENJOY!!!!!