Mater Dei defeated Long Beach Poly 83-63 to advance to the Open Division Regional final game. Elijah Brown had 33 points and 11 rebounds while Stanley Johnson added 21 points.
Video by Jonathan Khamis, OCVarsity.com.
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Long Beach Poly and Mater Dei renewed their championship rivalry and the Jackrabbits prevailed, 35-17, to claim the CIF-SS Pac-5 Division championship game in front of 12,736 on Saturday night at Angel Stadium.
Long Beach Poly won the highly-anticipated rubbermatch and is now 2-1-1 in championship games against Mater Dei. The two teams meet in three consecutive Division 1 finals from 1997-99. Poly is 17-3-2 in championship games (Correction: I missed Poly’s 1980 Coastal Conference title in the original post).
The Jackrabbits scored on their first three possessions to take an early 21-3 lead and Mater Dei found itself playing catch-up the rest of the way.
Poly used direct snaps to running backs Gerard Wicks and Manu Luuga to wreak havoc on Mater Dei’s defense. Wicks and Luuga burned the Monarchs with their speed.
QB Tai Tiedemann threw a 21-yard TD pass to Juju Smith and a 38-yard TD strike to Thomas Tucker. Those two TD passes sandwiched Luuga’s 71-yard TD run to give the Jackrabbits a 21-3 lead with 10:06 left in the first half.
Because Mater Dei was facing such a deficit so early it was forced to take chances. The Monarchs moved the ball all night, but got stopped on fourth down and time and time again.
Monarchs QB Chase Forrest is only a sophomore and has tons of potential, but he took a pounding against the Jackrabbits, whoc sacked him five times, knocked him down multiple times and intercepted him once. But Forrest showed a lot of heart. He was 28 of 53 for 308 yards and one TD. That’s a heck of a performance against that ferocious D.
Juju Smith was as impressive on defense as he was on offense. And he made a class move in the third quarter. Mater Dei’s stud receiver Thomas Duarte made a spectacular diving catch that sent him crashing out of bounds. Duarte was ruled out of bounds. Smith was covering on the play and he gave Duarte a high-five on the way to the huddle.
Another superstar on display on Saturday night was UCLA-bound linebacker Jayon Brown. This guy was everywhere on the field. He was delivering hits in the secondary, stuffing run plays, getting pressure on the pass rush and he returned a fumble 14 yards for a TD. He finished with 8 tackles and two tackles for loss.
Cal-Hi Sports.com’s Mark Tennis said he believes Poly will play Clovis North in the CIF state Division 1 regional next week when the pairings are announced on Sunday.
Follow me on Twitter @LosOCVarsity.
The OCVarsity Army has spent all week writing features previewing the Mater Dei vs. Long Beach Poly showdown in the CIF-SS Pac-5 championship game tonight at Angel Stadium.
We have eight people covering tonight’s game, including ace columnist Jeff Miller. So all of you OCVarsity maniacs will have info coming out of your eyeballs tonight. We are taking this championship coverage to the next level.
We all know the legendary rivalry between Mater Dei and Long Beach Poly and how they met in three consecutive Division I championship games from 1997-99. The teams are 1-1-1 against each other so tonight is the ultimate rubbermatch.
The big questions I have on my mind heading into this game: Does Mater Dei coach Bruce Rollinson have the best mustache in the county? Does he have the best stache on the planet?
These are the important questions and I need answers.
I think if we had an Orange County Stache-off it would have to be between Rollo and Pacifica softball coach Mark Campbell. Both coaches are rugged and tough individuals. If their staches went toe-to-toe, I don’t know what the outcome would be. Rollo would probably challenge his stache to crush Campbell’s stache and vice versa. The epic battle would probably cause a permanent rift in the space-time continuim.
Where would Rollo and Campbell’s staches rank among some of the legendary staches? Sam Elliott’s Tombstone stache is classic. How about Tom Selleck’s Magnum P.I. stache? That was a beauty. MMA champion Don Frye’s stache did a lot of butt-kicking in his day.
There’s no way I can get answers to all these questions. I guess I just created an anomaly wrapped in a matrix with this stache conundrum. I give up.
Kickoff is at 7:30 p.m. Stay tuned for all the updates.
Follow me on Twitter @LosOCVarsity.
The Monarchs advance to their third consecutive state championship game with a 54-43 victory over Long Beach Poly in the Division I SoCal regional final. Nirra Fields led the team with 20 points.
Click here to read the game recap.
Click here to view the Mater Dei boys victory over Bullard.
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The Monarchs defeated Long Beach Poly 63-59 to capture their 21st CIF-SS championship under head coach Gary McKnight.
Xavier Johnson finished with 19 points and 20 rebounds.
Click here to read the game recap.
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CIF-Southern Section will announce on Wednesday morning the times/dates for the championship games at Anaheim Convention Center. Anticipate, though, that Mater Dei-Long Beach Poly in the 1AA final is Saturday at 6:30 p.m., followed by the 1A final of Mission Viejo-Orange Lutheran at 8:30 p.m.
Tickets will be available Wednesday morning at the participating schools, and also can be purchased at ticketmaster.com (which will add its usual fees to the purchase). Prices: $7-$13. Parking: $12.
Tickets, at $12 and $22 are available for the two-day event at Mater Dei. It begins Friday, highlighted by two good ones — Mater Dei boys vs. St. John Bosco at 7:30 p.m.; Windward girls, No. 1 in California, vs. No. 2 Mater Dei girls at 9 p.m.
Saturday has a bunch of good games, all boys games, including Orange Lutheran-Long Beach Poly (No. 2 in California) at 6 p.m.; Mater Dei (No. 1 in California)-La Verne Lutheran (featuring 6-foot-10 Grant Jerrett) at 7:30 p.m.; and Bishop Gorman of Las Vegas, starring national No. 1 prospect Shabazz Muhammad, vs. Whitney Young of Chicago at 9 p.m.
Parking is free on Friday, $5 on Saturday.
The full schedule:
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I vote each week on the CIF-Southern Section rankings for 11-man football divisions.
There are 13 divisions. I vote in only three divisions — Southern, Southwest and Pac-5 — because those are the divisions in which I feel I best informed.
I won’t vote on, say, the Central or Inland divisions that have no Orange County teams, or the East Valley Division in which there are only a couple of OC teams.
How I voted on the Pac-5 top 10 this week …
Cox3 will carry live coverage of the Mission Viejo vs. Don Bosco Prep game Saturday at 4 p.m.
Don Bosco Prep of Ramsey, NJ, is the No. 1 team in ESPN Rise’s national rankings. Mission Viejo is No. 6 in those rankings, the second-highest ranked California team behind No. 3 De La Salle of Concord.
Servite is No. 17, Centennial of Corona is No. 37 and Long Beach Poly is No. 46.
Cox3 is available in south county.
More football news from the OCVarsity blog:
Edison quarterback Chase Favreau last week fractured a bone in his left hand — he’s left-handed — and will miss some summer football activity.
Edison coach Dave White said Favreau suffered the injury while involved in typical HB recreational activity — skateboarding.
White hopes Favreau is able to participate in Edison’s passing tournament that begins July 9 and has a great group of teams in it — Oaks Christian, Centennial of Corona, San Clemente, Mater Dei, Westlake, Valencia of Valencia, Foothill, Los Alamitos and Long Beach Poly.
We don’t see Poly frequently in OC passing events.
More football news from the OCVarsity blog:
Slideshow: Hot Shots Overtime 1: Tuesday's baseball playoffs (5-14-13)
Slideshow: Hot Shots Overtime 1: Wednesday's volleyball semifinals (5-15-13)
Slideshow: Hot Shots Overtime 2: Thursday's softball playoffs (5-16-13)
Slideshow: Hot Shots Overtime 2: Wednesday's tennis, baseball playoffs (5-15-13)
Slideshow: Hot Shots Overtime: Monday's spring sports (5-13-13)
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