Palm Desert Has Ganesha on Radar

Justin Sobczyk, the leading scorer on the Palm Desert boys’ basketball team, has a pretty good idea of what to expect from host Pomona Ganesha when the teams meet tonight in a Southern Section Division III-AA first-round playoff game.

“They’re pretty quick and athletic, but not very big,” said Sobczyk, a junior guard who averages 18.6 points. “They also shoot the ball well.”

Predicting how his team will play, however, hasn’t proved so easy.

Palm Desert (16-10) had its best game of the season a week ago, when it upset Desert Valley League champion Cathedral City, 65-55. The Lions, seeded fourth in Division II-AA, came into the game with only one loss.

Two days later, Palm Desert lost for the second time to La Quinta, led by former Palm Desert player Quintin Watkins.

That defeat dropped the Aztecs into a tie for second with La Quinta in the Desert Valley standings and left them with the league’s No. 3 berth into the playoffs.

“It was an all-around bad game,” Sobczyk said. “We played horrible.”

Ganesha (18-8) finished as co-champion of the Valle Vista League.

-- Dan Arritt

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Eagle Rock will play at Los Angeles Bravo at 4 p.m. today in a play-in game for the City Section’s Invitational playoffs. The winner will play at L.A. King Drew Medical in a first-round game Friday.

Incorrect information had been presented at the City’s seeding meeting Saturday that left Eagle Rock out of the tournament, section spokesman Jeff Halpern said.

Eric Sondheimer

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Girls’ Basketball

Long Beach Poly opens the Southern Section Division I-AA playoffs with a home game Saturday against the winner of Thursday’s wild-card game between Rolling Hills Estates Peninsula and Littlerock.

The top-seeded Jackrabbits got over one mental hurdle when they beat Harbor City Narbonne in a nonleague game two weeks ago. It marked Poly’s first victory over the City Section power.

There is still a major hurdle left: second-seeded Lynwood, which has defeated Poly in the Division I-AA finals the last two years.

“I haven’t seen them since we scrimmaged them before the season,” Poly Coach Carl Buggs said. “Our first team matched up pretty well with them.”

The respective starting units played only about six minutes against each other. Poly outscored Lynwood by six points, Buggs said.

“That was a scrimmage,” he said, “and that don’t matter.”

Martin Henderson

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Boys’ Soccer

Inglewood Animo Leadership posted a 16-4-3 record during the regular season, but that wasn’t enough to get the freelance team into the Southern Section playoffs that start with wild-card games today.

Animo, a semifinalist in the Division V playoffs last year during its first season at the varsity level, was 12-3-2 against teams that will compete in the section playoffs at the Division I, III, IV, V or VI level this season.

But Southern Section rules stipulate that a freelance team win at least 80% of its games -- in a system in which a tie counts as half a win and half a loss -- in order to automatically qualify for the playoffs.

Because Animo failed to do that, the Aztecs were not included in either the 33-team Division IV or 32-team Division V fields released by the section Monday.

Animo Coach Sergio Medrano asked the section to consider his team for one of two at-large berths at the Division II level, but the Aztecs were not selected.

“Rules are rules,” Medrano said. “But still, it’s very disappointing for all of us because we feel we had a very successful season in anybody’s eyes.”

John Ortega

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Girls’ Soccer

Last season, Los Alamitos cherished its role as postseason spoiler. The Griffins upset top-seeded North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake, 4-1, on the road in the first round of the Southern Section Division I playoffs.

Coach Patrick Rossi said his team is enjoying its position even more heading into this season’s playoffs, which begin for the Griffins on Saturday.

Rossi’s team, ranked No. 3 in the Southland by The Times, is seeded second after winning its first Sunset League title since 1996.

“I’d rather be here than be the underdog team,” he said.

A second-place finish in the Santa Ana Foothill Excalibur tournament in December and a late-season 1-0 victory over Huntington Beach Edison got everybody’s attention.

Los Alamitos (18-3-2) plays host to Mission Viejo Capistrano Valley (10-5-6) in a first-round match.

The Cougars aren’t as strong as last season’s team that reached the semifinals, losing to eventual co-champion San Clemente, 1-0, in overtime. But two ties with No. 1-ranked San Clemente and another with No. 2 Arcadia are proof that they are still a postseason threat.

Los Alamitos won, 2-1, in the teams’ first meeting in the Excalibur semifinals.

Elia Powers

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Wrestling

Bell and Woodland Hills El Camino Real received first-round byes for the City Section dual-meet championships, which begin at 4 p.m. Thursday at El Camino Real.

The top six teams in the section qualified for the championships.

Two-time defending champion San Fernando will open with Reseda Cleveland in the first round, with the winner taking on El Camino Real in the semifinals. Chatsworth and L.A. University will meet in the other first-round bout, with the winner facing Bell.

The championship match is scheduled for 7:30 p.m.

-- Rafer Weigel