Boys’ basketball: Playoffs go on without Villa Park
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For the first time in recent memory, the boys’ basketball playoffs will go on without Villa Park.
The Spartans might not have qualified anyway -- they finished the regular season 8-18 overall and 2-8 in the Century League -- but their fate was sealed when Southern Section Commissioner Jim Staunton barred them from postseason play for the school’s failure to impose what Staunton considered was appropriate punishment for alleged recruiting violations.
The school and Orange Unified School District suspended Coach Kevin Reynolds for two games earlier this season after The Times reported that three players who either played or attempted to play as transfers used an Extended Stay America hotel in Orange as their home address. An Esperanza student’s parent also alleged that Reynolds violated the section’s undue-influence rules by meeting privately with her and encouraging her to move her son to Villa Park.
The Spartans did not submit an application for at-large consideration in Division II-A, but their credentials were comparable to those of Westlake (8-20) and Riverside North (7-20), which both qualified for the playoffs.
-- Ben Bolch