Southern California Regionals : Manual Arts to Face Fremont in Semifinals

Manual Arts High School, City 4-A runner-up, will play Fremont, the City 3-A titlist, tonight in a boys’ Southern California Regional Division I basketball semifinal game at Cal State Dominguez Hills. Crenshaw (22-3) the City 4-A champion, will play host to Fresno Edison (22-6) in the other semifinal.

In advancing to tonight’s game, Manual Arts (25-1) defeated Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley, the Southern Section 5-A champion, 69-63, and Fremont (25-3) defeated Long Beach Millikan, the Southern Section 5-AA champion, 66-60.

Manual Arts defeated Fremont, 72-63, in the teams’ only meeting this season, at the Los Angeles Tournament in December.

Eighteen other boys’ and girls’ semifinal games, involving a number of rematches, also are scheduled tonight. All games, except in doubleheaders, begin at 7:30. Doubleheader games start at 6:30 and 8:30.

In what may be the most interesting matchup, Glendora (29-2) gets a chance to avenge last week’s Southern Section 4-AA title-game loss to San Bernardino (31-0). Those teams will play in a Division II semifinal game at UC Irvine.

The game was originally scheduled for San Bernardino High, but the 1,800-seat gym was sold out within an hour Wednesday morning and the game was moved to the Bren Center, which seats 5,200 and was sold out for the 4-AA title game.

Glendora’s Tracy Murray scored 41 points in that game, but that was four below his season average. San Bernardino took a 34-27 lead at haltime and held on for a 72-69 victory. San Bernardino was led by Bryon Russell, a 6-foot-7 senior, who scored 14 of his 26 points in the second quarter.

Compton Dominguez (25-4) the Southern Section 4-A champion, travels to Del Mar Torrey Pines (31-0) in the other Division II semifinal game.

In Division III, Inglewood Morningside (22-4), which upset top-seeded San Diego Lincoln in a first-round game, 81-67, travels to Corona del Mar (18-9). Two weeks ago, Morningside lost a 3-A Southern Section semifinal game to Corona del Mar in overtime, 57-56.

Oxnard Santa Clara (24-3) plays Orange Lutheran (24-4) at Ventura College in a Division IV semifinal game. Last week, Santa Clara easily handled Orange Lutheran, 78-54, in winning the Southern Section 2-A title.

In the first game of the doubleheader at Ventura College, Santa Clara (25-1) meets Santa Ynez (21-6) in a girls’ Division IV semifinal game. The schools are both from the Frontier League and have met three times this season including last week’s Southern Section 2-A title game. In each case, Santa Clara has prevailed by about 10 points.

There are two other girls’ games involving rematches. Top-seeded Morningside (30-1) plays host to Los Angeles Washington (23-4) in Division I, and Anaheim Katella (25-3) is home against Pasadena Muir (23-3) in Division II.

Morningside edged Washington by a point in a December tournament game and Katella defeated Muir, 54-48 in overtime, in the Southern Section 4-A final last week.