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The top four teams in won-loss percentage in the County were San Diego (25-3, .880), Helix (16-5, .762), Mission Bay (17-6, .737), and Hoover (19-9, .679). It was the latter that battled through four rounds of the CIF Southern Section playoffs to get to the finals. Hoover was an uninspiring 10-8 heading into the stretch run of ...

What does it mean when an unprecedented five different teams receive first-place votes in John Maffei’s latest The San Diego Union poll? It could mean that area hoops are mediocre, at best, this year. No team stands out and the usual powers have done little to get excited about. Or could it be Covid, which won’t go ...

The first The San Diego Union-Tribune basketball poll has a couple old reliables, St. Augustine (6-1) and Torrey Pines (7-0 after a 70-57 win over Santa Fe Christian last night, after the poll was completed) at the top. St. Augustine’s only loss was to Chatsworth Sierra Canyon, 51-46, in a game  the Saints led, 33-27, after ...

Cathedral, Mater Dei and Scripps Ranch will seek state championships this week in games that are ranked tossups.  All games Friday and Saturday will be at Mission Viejo Saddleback College. Cathedral (11-2) will get an opportunity to reverse a 21-14 loss in 2018 to Folsom (11-3).  Folsom is eighth in the weekly Cal-Hi Sports poll, Cathedral ...

The teams in the Southern California Division 6-AA playoffs tonight play the long game. The Quartz Hill Royals (9-4), located 70 miles north of Los Angeles and on the upper edge of the Southern Section boundary, will travel almost 250 miles, a distance not  unfamiliar to their opponent, Blythe Palo Verde Valley. The Yellow jackets have represented ...

Resurgent Patrick Henry, 19-9 in three seasons under coach J.T. O’Sullivan and 10-2 in 2021, takes on visiting Lake Balboa Birmingham Saturday night in the Southern California Division III-A playoffs. San Diego Section schools don’t often play those from the Los Angeles City Section, usually only in postseason matchups such as this. Birmingham (8-5), which has the ...

Scripps Ranch and the rubber will hit the road Saturday for a 6 p.m. game in the Southern California Division II-A playoffs at Santa Clarita Valencia, 160 miles away. Coach Marlin Gardinera’s team,  11-1 and averaging 44 points after a 42-0 win over La Jolla in the San Diego Section finals last week, are on a ...

The CIF came up with an unusual pairing this week: teams representing the same section and which should have intimate knowledge. Intimate knowledge was denied, because COVID canceled a Highlanders-Crusaders match in Week 3. There is shared common knowledge, however. Mater Dei defeated Otay Ranch, 41-7, and St. Augustine, 35-0. Helix beat the former, 29-14, and the ...

Cathedral has won its last two Southern California Division I-AA playoff games, 35-28 in 2016 and 24-21 in 2018, each time at home against Harbor City Narbonne. In attempting to win a third the Dons will head 70 miles North Friday to play Orange Lutheran, a four-loss team that was fifth in its league, at Orange ...

We’re on holiday, in the process of enriching the Las Vegas economy, so this will be short, in more ways than one. This week’s fearless, if not peerless, Division I-V predictions: D-I, Lincoln 31, Helix 20.  Can’t go against my alma mater. D-II, Scripps Ranch 38, La Jolla 35. I live in the community of three million eucalyptus ...

I went out on a very unstable limb last week and crashed. Picking Torrey Pines to beat Carlsbad and Mission Hills to knock off Cathedral not only was ill-advised but was punctuated with an in-your-face (mine) combined, 82-17 score  by the winning teams. Now we have a championship that brings together two clubs representing, on paper, the ...

The Cavers were out of sorts. San Diego High finished with an 18-8 record, its poorest since the 17-10 of 1950, and the Cavers lost four games in a row down the stretch to fall out of City Prep League and playoff contention. According to Don King’s Caver Conquest, the athletic history of the school, the streak ...

Round two of the San Diego Section playoffs offer quarterfinals in Divisions I-V and semifinals in the  Open Division. The four clubs in the highest bracket, beginning play after a week off:  4 TORREY PINES (6-3) @1 CARLSBAD (10-0) The Falcons get another shot at the unbeaten Lancers, a team Torrey Pines had on the ropes, 33-27, only ...

Track and field made a  leap with multiple outstanding performances in several events. All five area qualifiers scored points in the greatest state meet in history, witnessed by about 4,500 persons on a 100-degree day in Chico. —Coach Raleigh Holt’s Hoover Cardinals won another City Prep League championship with depth in every race, jump, and throw, ...

League championships can be forgotten amid the giant second season of playoffs. if a team has a pulse, no matter how few W’s and how many L’s, it’s most likely a postseason participant. But don’t pass that along to the San Diego Section’s regular-season winners. Players identify these achievements on their letter jackets, coaches enhance their resumes, ...

Big Brother split with Little Brother in two traditional games last week. Younger Helix made it a quarter century of continued success with a 25th consecutive win over older Grossmont, 29-14, and older Mira Mesa topped younger Scripps Ranch, 38-35. Helix now is 46-18-2 against Grossmont since 1951, when the fledgling school divided enrollment and geographic borders ...

Grossmont is going to beat Helix one of these years.  Maybe this week. The way things have gone the last 40-odd that’s a lukewarm maybe. The teams will meet for the 66th time with host Helix holding a 45-18-2 record in the all-time series. A victory for the Foothillers over their so-called younger sibling took place so long ...

Three neighborhood rivals with long histories resume their versions of trench warfare this week. Chula Vista and Sweetwater, 2.9 miles apart and the oldest schools south of the San Diego city limits, play for the 74th consecutive year in a chain that began when Chula Vista opened in 1947. The Spartans lead the Red Devils, 39-33-3, in ...

Another outstanding San Diego High team (27-4) was unexpectedly bounced from the playoffs but Grossmont won a Southern Section championship, joining the similarly successful 1951 squad. Only one team from each league was invited to the playoffs, so Hoover was a non-participant despite a record that was a reported 24-4. San Diego junior Deron Johnson was Southern ...

It didn’t have much influence on John Maffei’s Union-Tribune Top 10 poll through Week 7, but the Carlsbad-Torrey Pines game, a last-second, 34-33 win for coach Thadd MacNeal’s unbeaten Lancers, rates as the game of the year and easily the best since the pandemic. Sophomore quarterback Julian Sayin drove the Lancers 90 yards in the waning ...