Classical (10-3) makes a first-ever appearance in the Southern California playoffs, host at neutral Del Norte to Lancaster (9-5) in Division VI-AA.

Despite finishing with a 1-2 record and in third place in the Pacific League, the Caimans rolled in the playoffs, upsetting Crawford, 33-14, in the D-V championship.

OPPONENT DOWN AND UP

Lancaster won eight of its last nine games, a streak interrupted only by a 63-0 loss to Palmdale Highland. The Eagles defeated Cerritos Valley, 44-42 for the Southern Section D-XII title.

Calpreps.com declared the Caimans are holding a 65 percent chance of defeating the team from North Los Angeles County.

GRANITE GOES SATURDAY

Granite Hills (11-2) takes on Rancho Cucamonga Etiwanda (9-5) in the Division II-A playoffs.

Other San Diego teams’ games are Friday, but the Eagles-Eagles contest is Saturday night at Granite Hills.

The computer calpreps.com gives Granite Hills a 62 percent chance of winning.

Coach Kellan Cobbs Eagles won their first San Diego Section championship, a D-II rout of 48-12 over Ramona after losses in 1975 and ’79.

The Eagles lost only to teams ranked in the Union-Tribune Top 10 this season, Poway (10-1), 31-19, in the opening game, and Madison (9-2), 15-12.

THE OTHER BIRDS OF PREY

Etiwanda’s Eagles overcame a 4-5 start and caught fire in a wild run to the Southern Section D-5 title.

Following a 38-7, opening-round victory over Yucaipa (a 21-14 winner in the regular season over University City),  the Eagles topped Anaheim Canyon, 69-49, Lawndale Leuzinger, 22-21, and La Canada  St. Francis, 45-42.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PLAYOFF BRACKETS

Pasadena Muir (8-6) travels to Blythe Palo Verde (13-1) for a Division V-AA playoff

These aren’t the 1935-vintage Muir Mustangs, featuring a future baseball great named Jackie Robinson, who came South and manhandled unbeaten Hoover, 27-0.

These Mustangs are more like the Mustangs who came South from 1947-54 and lost seven of nine games to San Diego, Hoover, and Grossmont.  Muir won a home game in the  Pasadena Rose Bowl, 26-7, over Mission Bay in 1957, the last year it played a San Diego-area squad.

The ponies won five of their last six this season and tied for second in the Lower Pacific League, earning themselves a 224-mile jaunt to the farming community on the California-Arizona border.

YELLOWJACKETS FAVORED

The computer algorithms of calpreps.com gives Palo Verde Valley (13-1) a 53 per cent chance of victory.

Blythe was largely unsuccessful after it  left the Southern Section and joined the San Diego Section with El Centro Central, El Centro Southwest, Calexico Vincent Memorial, Calexico, and Brawley, the entire Imperial Valley League, in 2000.

Wally Grant arrived as head coach in 2019 and the Yellowjackets were 6-6 in their final year in the Imperial Valley circuit.  They moved to the more accommodating Manzanita League in 2020.

The Manzanita got a new name in 2021 and Grant’s scrappers have become Desert League kings, going 11-3 in 2021 and 13-1 this season.

University City is not trying to climb Mt. San Jacinto this week; the Centurions are attempting a different climb, over San Jacinto High, but the calpreps.com computer suggests that neither the hypothetical or real option favors coach Paul Lawrence’s team.

Calpreps gives the Tigers a 65 per cent chance of winning the Division III-AA playoff on its home field in the community 87 miles northeast of the U.C. campus.

Mt. San Jacinto, elevation 10,384 feet and connected to the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, stares down on the city of 45,000 persons, six miles as the crow flies and 47 miles by auto from the Tigers’ campus.

San Jacinto High is many millenniums younger but still one of the oldest schools in Riverside County.  It opened in 1910.  University City followed 73 years later.

The Tigers (12-2) rolled undefeated through the Mountain Pass League this season against  Perris, Hemet Tahquitz, Perris Citrus Hill, Winchester Liberty, and Hemet West Valley.

Their only losses were 46-36 to Temecula Chaparral in Week 3 and 28-27 to Beaumont in Week 5. The Tigers defeated Orange El Modena, 42-15, for the Southern Section D-VI championship. El Modena’s 26.6 calpreps.com rating almost matched University City’s 27.6, which is at a distance from the the Tigers’ 34.8.

The Centurions (11-2) defeated Point Loma, 33-28, for the San Diego Section D-III championship as Samuel Cooper, all 6-feet, 3 inches, and 230 pounds at quarterback, ran 3 and 35 yards for touchdowns and hooked up with Dreyden Carter on a 65-yard touchdown pass play in the second half.

The victory was U. City’s ninth in a row, tying the school record by the 9-2 team of 1992.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PLAYOFF BRACKETS

TRUE GRID

San Jacinto holds a 16-6 lead in an off-and-on series with San Diego-area teams, since the first game, a 32-7 loss to Harry Wexler’s Escondido Cougars in 1929…except for visiting Eastlake’s 31-14 victory  in 2019 there had been no Tiger sightings here since 1984…an oddity of San Diego’s separation from the Southern Section was that Fallbrook, which joined the Tigers in the DeAnza League in 1959, remained in the Riverside County loop in 1960 although a part of the new San Diego Section….

Mater Dei’s opponent hasn’t been seen by a San Diego team in 65 years.

Such are the Southern California playoffs.

The Crusaders open defense of their state Division II-AA title this week on the road against the Downey Vikings, who upset San Diego, 24-7, in the Southern Section championship game in 1957.

That contest, before 12,500 persons in Aztec Bowl, including 22 busloads of red-clad fans from the community southeast of Los Angeles, represented a bitter conclusion to a great season for the favored, 11-0 Cavers. (Search 1957: “Downey Gives Cavers Bellyache”).

Mater Dei wasn‘t around  to feel their pain.

The school would open three years later as Marian in the South Bay hamlet of Nestor, about the time San Diego was exiting the Southern Section.

Marian became Mater Dei on a new campus in Chula Vista in 2007, the same year San Diego schools could again participate in what became the Southern California and state playoffs.

SUPERSTARS

Downey also defeated San Diego, 35-21, at Long Beach Veterans’ Stadium in 1956, one of the most memorable seasons in CIF history.

The Vikings tied Anaheim, 13-13, for the Southern Section championship before more than 41,000 persons in the Los Angeles Coliseum.

Downey star Randy Meadows and Anaheim’s Mickey Flynn had created such a buzz that when the two were united on the South team the following summer in the North-South Shrine all-star game almost 86,000 persons packed the Coliseum.

CRUSADERS RALLY

Mater Dei coach John Joyner and quarterback Dominic Nanquil held their team together after an 0-4 start and it responded with nine wins in a row, including the Division I championship.

The Crusaders, trailing, 29-28, to Mission Hills, marched 83 yards to Nanquil’s 30-yard pass to Jerry McClure with three seconds remaining in the game for a 34-28 win before 4,500 persons at Southwestern College.

Downey (12-2), runner-up to Downey Warren in the Gateway League, defeated Cypress, 40-7, for the Southern Section D-IV championship. The Vikings’ losses were in the opening game, 41-10, to Newport Beach Corona del Mar and 47-22 to Warren.

The Vikings have a calpreps.com rating of 44 to Mater Dei’s 43.6. The website gives the host team a 58 per cent chance of winning, although Mater Dei is ranked 33^rd in the state by Cal-Hi Sports and the Vikings 43^rd.

VIKINGS VINTAGE

Downey High is large and old.  It opened in 1901 under the name of Las Nietos Valley Union High but the name was changed in 1919.  According to Wikipedia, the school has 4,340 students.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PLAYOFF BRACKETS

OTHERS RECEIVING VOTES
University City (11-2, 19 points), Blythe Palo Verde Valley (13-1, 3), Ramona (8-5, 3), Classical (10-3, 1), La Costa Canyon (7-5, 1).

• John Maffei, San Diego Union-Tribune.
• Steve Brand, Thomas Gutierrez, Rick Hoff, Terry Monahan, Don Norcross, Eric Williams, Freelance contributors.
• Brandon Stone, Allison Edmonds, John Carroll, KUSI-Channel 51 TV.
• Rick Smith, partletonsports.com.
• Ramon Scott, Adam Paul, eastcountysports.com.
• John Kentera, Braden Suprenant (97.3 FM The Fan).
• Bodie DeSilva, scoreboardlive.com.
• Steve (Biff) Dolan, Mountain Country 107.9 FM.
• Christian Pedersen, San Diego Sports Association.
• Troy Hirsch, Nic Pollino (Fox 5 San Diego).
• Todd Cassen, Joe Heinz, Ron Marquez, CIF San Diego Section.
• Mike Dolan, Rex Johnson, CIF Advisory Committee.
• Joe Evangelist, San Diego Coaching Legends Committee.
• Will Torrez, Valley Sports Network.
• Raymond Brown, sdfootball.net.
• Tom Helmantoler, Southern Conference Advisor.
• MaxPreps.

Notes about this week’s Southern California playoff teams, including contributions from Webmaster and researcher Henrik Jonson:

TRAVELIN’ HIVE

The state CIF announced a few weeks ago that it would rely on calpreps.com’s rating system in choosing sites for the Southern California playoffs and state bowl games.

Lincoln’s 11-1 record is superior to Chatsworth Sierra Canyon’s 10-4, but the Hornets are making the 151-mile trip because their calpreps.com rating is 60 compared to Sierra Canyon’s 62.4, which is inclusive of three league opponents with ratings above 50.

(Lincoln and Carlsbad [53.3] are the only San Diego Section schools with a rating of 50 or above).

Ratings and division assignments essentially come down to (a) who you played, (b) how you did, and (c) how who you played did.

Lincoln already has been to the North San Fernando Valley this season.  The Hornets ventured 144 miles to Mission Hills, where they were stunned, 14-7, by Bishop Alemany, a 42-0 loser to its Mission League rival Sierra Canyon.

ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Travel is nothing new at the Hive.

As the student sports editor of The Buzz,  I followed the team 190 miles north in 1956 to see Lincoln’s 19-0 victory over the Santa Paula Cardinals.

Lincoln made a 150-mile trip to the San Fernando Valley in 1962 and took a 29-7 loss to Los Angeles Monroe.

Coach Vic Player’s Hornets traveled  500-plus miles to San Francisco Wilson, winning, 82-0, in 1987; to Queens in New York City in 1989, defeating Benjamin Cardozo, 45-8, and to Hawaii in 1990, losing to Honolulu St. Louis School, 44-13.

Reaching the state D-II championship in 2018, Lincoln bused 506 miles to Redwood City, where it lost to Menlo-Atherton, 21-7. Lincoln had won its Southern California playoff that season, 54-44 over Culver City after a 130-mile trip.

TRAILBLAZERS BLAZING

Sierra Canyon has won eight in a row since a 31-28, double-overtime loss to La Puente Bishop Amat, which has 56.7 calpreps.com strength.

Other losses were to San Juan Capistrano San Juan Hills (57.8), 31-17, Westlake Village Oaks Christian (44.1), 38-21, and Mission Viejo (67), 41-0. The Trailblazers won Mission League games against Gardena Serra (52.1), 35-21, and West Hills Chaminade (53.3), 49-14.

Sierra Canyon has gotten fat on San Diego teams.  It defeated Horizon, 58-7, and Tri-City, 55-13 in 2011, La Jolla Country Day, 34-3 in 2012, and Helix, 38-20, in the 2019 playoffs.

HOOPS POWER

The school of about 1,000 students, with Upper and Lower campuses for grades 1 through 12, is known more for basketball, with a national profile because of several alumni in the NBA and one of its senior players this season, Bronny James, LeBron’s son.

The Trailblazers played in the Montgomery Tournament in San Diego in the 2021-22 season and defeated the host Aztecs, 51-19, San Ysidro, 84-70, and St. Augustine, 51-46.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PLAYOFF BRACKETS

NEXT:  II-AA, II-A