No matter who wins or loses tonight’s Orange Lutheran-JSerra game at Irvine Valley College, a 7 p.m. game that decides who in the Trinity League finishes in third place — the league’s final guaranteed playoff berth — both teams will go to the playoffs. There will be plenty of at-large berths in their divisions, for JSerra in Division 4AA and Orange Lutheran in 1AA, and both are high enough in their divisional rankings to get an at-large berth (JSerra is No. 11 in 4AA, OLu is No. 3 in 1A).

But the coaches, JSerra’s Joedy Gardner and Orange Lutheran’s Chris Nordstrom, don’t want to leave it to chance.

As Nordstrom said, “Weird things can happen. It would be difficult to face our players, their parents and people at our school if we somehow did not get into the playoffs because we decided to not play this game.”

A couple of third-place games today that really could matter:

Costa Mesa vs. Godinez at Calvary Chapel, Orange Coast League, 7 p.m.

Los Amigos vs. Santiago at Bolsa Grande, Garden Grove League, 4 p.m.

More boys basketball news from the OCVarsity blog:

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