Foothills Christian is second in UT-San Diego‘s basketball poll, but the Knights are 18th in the Cal-Hi Sports state vote, ahead of San Diego Section rankings leader La Costa Canyon.

La Costa received all 11 first-place votes in the local balloting, but the Mavericks  received on-the-bubble status and are out of the top 20 in the state-wide publication’s weekly ratings.

The UT-San Diego poll  is inclusive of games through last Saturday.

Action has been hot and heavy for the  first three weeks of the season and local clubs have been active in tournaments here, out of the area, and out of state.

All attention shifts  this week to the Under-Armour tournament at Torrey Pines and other North County venues.  The four-day event brings together outstanding teams from throughout the U.S.

Foothills (6-4) tips at 7 p.m. on Friday at Torrey Pines against Los Angeles Westchester (6-4), for decades a state and national leader.  La Costa Canyon (9-1) will be on its home court at 7 Friday against Santa Monica (3-5).

Coach Brad Leaf’s Foothills Knights are 8-2 competitively but 6-4 legislatively. The ubiquitous and Dreaded Administrative Glitch resulted in forfeiture of a 89-59 win over San Ysidro and 83-33 rout of Rancho Buena Vista. Player eligibility, as usual, was the problem.

The Knights’ two losses on the court were 66-59 to Long Beach Poly (Cal-Hi Sports’ 6) and 84-73 to Chino Hills (16).  They also own victories over Constitution of Philadelphia, 88-60, and 71-66 over Lone Peak of  Montana.

UT-San Diego poll #2:

*Awarded on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. NR–Not ranked.

Others receiving votes:  Grossmont, 15; Mater Dei, 11; Cathedral, Poway, 10 each; Army-Navy, Steele Canyon, 7 each; Mission Baay, 54; Sweetwater, 3; Eastlake, 2.

Eleven San Diego County sportswriters and broadcasters, and a CIF San Diego Section representative vote each week. The panel includes John Maffei and Kirk Kenney (UT-San Diego), Terry Monahan (UT-San Diego correspondent), Bill Dickens (eastcountysports.com), Steve Brand (San Diego Hall of Champions), John Labeta (CIF San Diego Section), Bodie DeSilva (sandiegopreps.com), Aaron Burgin (fulltimeshoops.com), Rick Willis (KUSI Chl. 51), Rick Smith (partletonsports.com), Drew Willis (sdcoastalsports.com).

Oh, my!

This had to be the worst weekend of football in San Diego County prep history.

Two state championship games, one a devastating blowout, the other an almost certain victory flushed in the final two minutes.

If John Carroll was thinking of retiring, and we have no idea what he’s thinking, would the great Oceanside coach  want to go out with such a stain on his legacy?

That stain was an astonishing, 68-7 loss to Folsom in the D-I championship, a loss made more incongruous in that the Pirates actually were the first team to score.

Oceanside went in front, 7-0,  on the game’s opening drive, the first time all season that its 16-0 opponent had been behind.

VAQUEROS ‘WAY AHEAD

El Capitan seemed comfortable in the favorite’s role as it stunned Moraga Campolindo for three, third-quarter touchdowns and  a 28-7 lead.

Campolindo battled back to tie the game but El Cap appeared ready to go in for the  winning touchdown or field goal when a fumble on  the 10-yard line  was recovered by the Cougars.

The result of the fumble recovery was a surreal, 90-yard run to the house that ended El Capitan’s hopes for a 15-0 season.

Final score, Campolindo 35, El Cap 28.

“You never know which way the ball’s going to bounce,” said Vaqueros quarterback Brad Cagle, who finished the game with a broken bone in his foot.  “That’s why they make it the shape that it is.”

Cagle was visiting with Kirk Kenney of UT-San Diego.

Kinney’s colleagues, the newspaper’s two North County reporters, left the Carson StubHub Center post-haste the night before after the Oceanside destruction.

John Maffei covered the North County basketball tournament yesterday and Terry Monahan was at Serra High, watching the Girls’ Kiwanis Tournament.

The football season had ended with a resounding thud.

Oceanside and El Capitan forged a Division I & III parlay into the state championships with convincing victories in the Southern California regional playoffs but now will take on two, explosive 15-0 teams  this week in Carson.

Oceanside (14-0) ran Central Section champion Fresno Edison off the field, 30-6  at halftime, and cruised, 37-22, last week, while El Capitan (14-0) overcame a slow start with 28 second-quarter points in a 41-0 victory over Paso Robles of the Southern Section.

Both San Diego teams can put up  points, El Cap averaging 38 and Oceanside 33, but they’ll be facing almost unprecedented firepower.

Moraga Campolindo of the North Coast Section, which averaged 46.7 points and scored 701 total, will meet El Capitan in D-III Saturday at Noon at the StubHub Center.

Oceanside faces the most daunting task as it seeks a third state championship against Folsom Friday night at 8.

The Bulldogs  scored 847 points, averaged 56.5 (San Diego observers saw a preview in a 55-10, opening-game Honor Bowl victory over Cathedral), and rolls with quarterback Jake Browning, who has thrown for 85 touchdowns.

That’s 85 for the year, not his career.

Browning’s three-season total is 223 and he’ll be aiming for at least a tie for the national record of 91 in one season, set by Corey Robinson of Lone Oak High in Paducah, Kentucky,  in 2010.

With apologies to  Johnny Cash and his 1956 hit, “Folsom Prison Blues,” Oceanside is going to “hear the train a comin'”, but coach John Carroll’s seasoned and tough Pirates make this game the attractive as any of the weekend.

COMPUTERS

Folsom ranks third and Oceanside fifth in Cal-Hi Sports‘ latest ratings.  The computer service calpreps.com gives Folsom a 71 rating and Oceanside 65.9.

El Capitan would seem to be the favorite against Campolindo, with a 59.5 rating to the Cougars’ 49.7.

Cal-Hi‘s No. 1 (13-0 Concord De La Salle) and 2 (12-2 Corona Centennial) teams will meet in the Open Division championship.

North Coast champion  De La Salle has a 71.3 calprep.com rating.  Centennial is at 76.8 but has a 43-42 loss to national No. 1 Las Vegas Gorman and 28-18 defeat by Santa Ana Mater Dei, which the Huskies topped in a Southern Section playoff rematch, 27-24.

Division II pairs the Southern Section’s Redlands East Valley, 14-1 with a 51.2 calpreps.com grade,  against the North Coast’s Concord Clayton Valley, 15-0 and 54.9, respectively.

San Juan Capistrano St. Margaret, which eliminated Christian, 48-21, in the regional last week, takes a 15-0 record and 31.8 computer rating against Modesto Central Catholic, 11-3 and 41.4 in D-IV.

Central Catholic won a division mismatch in 2012, routing Santa Fe Christian, 66-7.

La Costa Canyon, which began and ended the 2013-14 campaign as the No. 1 team in the San Diego Section weekly poll (it fell to fifth during the season)  is again at the top of the UT-San Diego inaugural basketball voting.

The Mavericks returned four starters (another reportedly tranferred to a prep school in New Hampshire) from last season’s 27-5 squad.

La Costa has a game against Las Flores Tesoro on Saturday after posting a 3-1 record in the Mission Viejo Diablo Inferno Tournament.

La Costa dropped a 62-47 decision to La Mirada and topped La Habra Sonora, 70-68, Anaheim Canyon, 69-54, and Anaheim Esperanza, 73-56.

Second-ranked Football Hills Christian, already 4-0 with a game against San Ysidro tonight, features 6-foot, 9-inch T.J. Leaf, who averaged 25.6 points and 12.6 rebounds as a sophomore.

A state Division IV favorite, Foothill will find out a lot about itself against Chino Hills Dec. 17 in the Tarkanian Vegas Classic and when the Knights meet Los Angeles Westchester in the first round of the post-Christmas Torrey Pines tournament.

St. Augustine, which lost to La Costa, 62-60, in the Open Division finals after topping the Mavericks, 77-74, in the regular season last year, is without Trey Kell for the first time in four seasons, but is 3-0, with wins over Box Hill of Australia, 65-46, 61-55 over Cathedral, and 84-52 over Rancho Bernardo.

Week 1 poll with last year’s records  and final ranking:

*Awarded on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. NR–Not ranked.

Others receiving votes:  Grossmont, 15; Mater Dei, 11; Cathedral, Poway, 10 each; Army-Navy, Steele Canyon, 7 each; Mission Baay, 54; Sweetwater, 3; Eastlake, 2.

Eleven San Diego County sportswriters and broadcasters, and a CIF San Diego Section representative vote each week. The panel includes John Maffei and Kirk Kenney (UT-San Diego), Terry Monahan (UT-San Diego correspondent), Bill Dickens (eastcountysports.com), Steve Brand (San Diego Hall of Champions), John Labeta (CIF San Diego Section), Bodie DeSilva (sandiegopreps.com), Aaron Burgin (fulltimeshoops.com), Rick Willis (KUSI Chl. 51), Rick Smith (partletonsports.com), Drew Willis (sdcoastalsports.com).

Oceanside was the unanimous choice of 19 voters as the No. 1 San Diego Section team in the final UT-San Diego poll.

The Pirates are fifth in Cal-Hi Sports‘ state rankings with a state playoff game against Fresno Edison this week and potentially a State Division I championship game in two weeks.

The Pirates were helped in the Cal-Hi poll when some teams ahead of Oceanside throughout the season were toppled in their respective section playoffs.

Conversely, Oceanside played a tough intersectional schedule, waded through 13 opponents without a loss,  and could move higher in the season’s final two weeks.

Other San Diego Section teams in the top 25 were El Capitan, now 17th after moving up from 20th, and Helix, now 24th, down from 21st.  Mission Hills, Cathedral, and St. Augustine enjoyed, if that’s the right word, “On the Bubble” status.

El Capitan, second to Oceanside locally, plays Paso Robles, and Christian, eighth locally, plays Capistrano St. Margaret in other state playoffs.

*Awarded on 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 basis. NR–Not ranked.

Others receiving votes:    The Bishop’s 17; San Marcos, 6; Hoover, Torrey Pines, Ramona, 2 each; El Camino, 1.

Unprecedented.

That’s the way pairings shook out for San Diego Section teams today when CIF state commissioner Roger Blake announced that three area squads will host games in the first round of the state playoffs.

Officially titled the 2014 CIF Regional Championship Bowl games, the schedule calls for two games here Friday night, Dec. 12, and one on Saturday, Dec. 13.

The Southern Section’s San Juan Capistrano St. Margaret (14-0) will be at Granite Hills High for a Division IV game to take on Christian (13-0) Friday at 7:30 p.m.

Oceanside (13-0) will play host to Fresno Edison (12-1) of the Central Section in a D-I contest at 7:30 p.m. on Friday.

El Capitan (13-0) is home on Saturday at 7:30 p.m. against Paso Robles (13-1) of the Southern Section.

San Diego teams have never numbered three in the state playoff series. The area was represented by two teams each in 2009, 2010, and 2012.

Games were played at the Home Depot/Stub Hub Center in Carson.

D-I
Edison, second oldest school in Fresno, having opened in 1906, has sent a number of players to the NFL, but never has visited this area.

(Fresno High pulled out of a scheduled game with San Diego in 1946 and Fresno Sunnyside defeated Torrey Pines, 22-21, in 2009).

The Edison Tigers won the County Metro League championship this season, with only a 15-14 loss to Sanger.

Edison defeated Bakersfield Liberty, 21-14, to get here and also holds a 15-14 win over Bakersfield, last year’s state D-I champion.

Oceanside won state championships in 2007  and in 2009  before advent of the Southern California regional bracket.

D-III

El Capitan had not been to a San Diego Section championship game in 51 years, much less win and host a state playoff.

The Paso Robles Bearcats, who’ve been around since 1901, will make a 331-mile journey South and hope for some clear skies.

The far North Southern Section team advanced by defeating Newbury Park, 13-10, on a muddy field at the Paso’s Flamson Middle School park, the gridiron of which is natural grass.

Cathedral topped 11-3 Newbury Park, 42-28, on the road in Week 5.

The Bearcats’ only loss was on the road in Week 10, 28-18, to 10-3 Atascadero.

D-IV

St. Margaret, which opened in 1979, has faced many small school teams in the San Diego Section, but this is its first meeting with Christian.

The Tartans will face a Patriots team that has won 20 games in a row and still smarting, somewhat, from the administrative politics which prevented them from competing in the state event in 2013.

Coach Matt Oliver’s team was an enrollment fit for Division IV but was considered only for a D-III bid which it did not receive.