The 2023-24 boys basketball season ended a couple of weeks ago, so the data is complete for figuring out how the Orange County conferences will align their members in leagues for the 2024-25 season.
Take a look at this one …
The Crestview League will be Canyon, Cypress, Foothill, La Habra and Sonora.
Dang.
“It’s going to be nuts,” said Cypress coach Derek Mitchell.
Canyon often is the best public-school team in Orange County boys basketball. The Comanches this season finished 22-8, and that was with their best player, Jaden Goodall, missing much of the season because of injury. Brandon Benjamin has returned to Canyon where he was the 2022-23 county player of the year before spending his junior season at Mater Dei. And 6-4 guard AJ Johnson recently transferred in from Pacifica Christian, where he averaged 8 points a game as a sophomore this past season.
Cypress was 23-7 last season and an Empire League co-champion with Crean Lutheran. Their best player in many games this past season was sophomore point guard Ryan Gov.
Foothill went 21-9 overall and 6-0 in the four-team Crestview League. Four Knights were selected all-league as juniors, including guard Travis Paleo and 6-11 Danny Kennard.
La Habra won the CIF Southern Section Division 3AA championship this past season. The Highlanders were 10-0 in the Freeway League and 30-5 overall. Division 3AA player of the year Grayson Sinek was a junior. Freeway League player of the year Acen Jimenez was a sophomore.
Sonora was 20-9 this past season. The Raiders’ Riley Hale was All-Freeway League first team as a junior. Sophomore Jonah Kim was second-team all-league.
No league in county boys basketball will be able to claim to have a better set of coaches than the Crestview League will have with Nate Harrison at Canyon, Derek Mitchell at Cypress, Yousef Etemadi at Foothill, Aaron Riekenberg at La Habra and Mike Murphy at Sonora.
All five of those coaches have been Orange County boys basketball coach of the year.
“Just from a coaching standpoint,” Harrison said, “it’s a high-high level public school league.
Every two school years new league configurations are created. The trend in recent years is to create large conferences, with leagues being set up inside of those conferences.
The Century Conference next school year will have 15 schools in it, with three leagues within the conference – Crestview, Freeway and North Hills leagues. The league membership will vary by sport. For example, El Dorado is in the Crestview League for girls basketball and the Freeway League for boys basketball.
Crean Lutheran is in the second group of Century Conference boys basketball teams. Crean is the only private school in the conference. The Saints finished this season 16-13 and were Empire League co-champions with Cypress. Crean got a tough draw in the CIF-SS Division 1 playoffs by having to face eventual champion Notre Dame of Sherman Oaks in the first round.
“It’s interesting that Crean is in the middle group,” observed Mitchell.
There will be football-only leagues in the 2024-25 school year. The top league — aside from the Trinity League — is a four-team grouping of Mission Viejo, Los Alamitos, San Clemente and Edison.
That’s a great group of football teams. But as far as degree of difficulty, perhaps no Orange County sports league will be able to match that Crestview League group for boys basketball.
NOTES
• The Trabuco Hills Invitational and Distance Carnival is Friday and Saturday at Trabuco Hills High. Among the athletes in it is Corona del Mar sprinter Ava Simos. …
• April is a big month for track and field. The Arcadia Invitational at Arcadia High School is April 6. The Orange County Championships at Mission Viejo High is April 13. …
• The Los Amigos baseball team’s equipment shed was broken into by thieves who took pretty much everything they could carry. A GoFundMe page has been created to help the program. …
• Quarterback Michael Tollefson has transferred from JSerra to Tustin, but that doesn’t mean JSerra is in trouble at the quarterback position. Sophomore Ryan Hopkins (6-3, 185) has been praised for his offseason work by those who keep track of those events. …
• “Reduction In Force” notices that teachers and coaches receive do not automatically mean the recipient is going to be laid off. Oftentimes school districts send out more of those notices than will actually lead to layoffs.
