Prep Basketball Playoffs / THIRD ROUND : TONIGHT’S GIRLS GAMES : Four Seeded Teams Face Road Tests : DIVISION III-AA

The road to the Southern Section championship begins in earnest tonight for Orange County girls’ basketball teams. That’s because most of them are on the road.

There are 16 Southern Section quarterfinal games tonight and local teams will be traveling in 12 of them.

Among the schools that will ride that lonesome highway--and have plenty of time to think about their games--are seeded teams Costa Mesa, Capistrano Valley, El Dorado and Troy.

Costa Mesa (24-4), the No. 1 seeded team in Division III-A, travels four hours to Lompoc (17-8); Capistrano Valley (22-3), No. 2 in I-AA, goes more than 100 miles to Oxnard to play Channel Islands (20-6); El Dorado (27-2), No. 2 in III-AA, plays at South Torrance (14-10), and Troy (23-4) must travel to Ridgecrest, the gateway to the Mojave Desert, to play Burroughs (18-7).

So much for any kind of home-court advantage for the seeded teams over the unseeded ones.

They aren’t the only ones who will be on the road. Defending III-A champion and second-seeded Rancho Alamitos (22-4) travels to Monrovia (16-7). In the III-AA, fourth-seeded Newport Harbor (19-6) plays at La Puente’s Bassett High (18-6). Unseeded Huntington Beach (25-3), the highest-ranked team on its side of the I-A bracket, travels to Ventura to face Buena (21-2).

In other games, in Division II-AA, Edison (15-11) is at Hemet (18-7), Woodbridge (22-5) is at Cerritos Gahr (19-8) and University (14-11) is at Moreno Valley (17-8). Capistrano Valley Christian (11-3) plays Arrowhead Christian (14-7) in Redlands in V-AA.

Different coaches have different attitudes about their prospective trips. But Capistrano Valley Coach Harlan Peet said he has prepared for it.

“We tried to schedule a couple of long trips so that we could prepare for the playoffs,” Peet said. “Riding for two hours is not conducive to getting off the bus and playing.”

The Cougars played at Peninsula on one occasion, and on another, the varsity went to Mater Dei and Peet made the players sit in the stands for two hours during a freshman game. They won both games, playing well at Peninsula and not as well at Mater Dei.

“That’s not easy to do,” Peet said. “You take a chance of losing the ballgame, but you’re also trying to look down the road at the same time.”

It’s a road Troy Coach Brad Sand is taking for the first time. He figures his players will be in the school vans about 3 1/2 hours. Their longest trip this season was 40 minutes.

“We’ve tried to turn it into a positive, a new adventure,” Sand said. “We watched ‘Hoosiers’ and talked about how these small towns in Indiana had to travel miles and miles to play a game.

“I would say that going 3 1/2 hours to their place is going to affect how many (of our) fans go see us. And they’re in a little town and they’re in the quarterfinals--it definitely helps them out quite a bit--I’m sure they’ll have a lot of people in the gym.”

Costa Mesa Coach Lisa McNamee, whose team is putting a 22-game winning streak on the line against Lompoc, said the lengthy trip doesn’t matter.

“I’m not concerned about the distance,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to our kids--they just like to play. We have nothing else to do on Saturday, so we might as well get up and get on the bus instead of sitting at home waiting for the game.”

El Dorado’s trip is about 75 minutes, about twice as long as their previous longest trip. Coach Gary Raya thinks it will give his players an opportunity to focus in on the game.

“I think we’ll be able to put our mind on the game and focus in on what we have to do,” he said. “We’ve only played two games in 16 days. We’re real loose in practice and it’s tough to stay focused when you practice against each other so much.”

There are some local teams who won’t have to make travel plans. Fourth-seeded Marina (21-4) plays host to Chino (18-7) in Division I-A; top-seeded Brea-Olinda (25-2) plays host to Burbank Burroughs (18-9) in II-AA; Cypress (17-8) plays host to top-seeded Morningside (24-2) and third-seeded Mission Hills Alemany (23-4) plays at Estancia (16-9) in III-AA.