Los Alamitos, Compton make Open Division, Long Beach Poly misses the cut

LOS ALAMITOS >> On Friday afteoon, the CIF Southe Section aounced the boys and girls basketball teams that qualified for the powerhouse Open Division.

As always, different coaches want different things regarding the Open Division, with some craving the challenge, while others would prefer to compete in a regular divisional bracket.

Among area teams, the Los Alamitos and Compton boys teams were selected for the Open Division, while Long Beach Poly was a somewhat surprising omission. The Jackrabbits’ girls team was the only girls team from the local area to make the Open bracket.

The Open Division brackets will be released Saturday moing, with all other basketball brackets slated to come out Sunday.

Los Alamitos head coach Eddie Courtemarche wasn’t expecting his Griffins to make the cut.

“We certainly have a tall hill to climb,” he said. “I’m surprised, to be honest. There were some other teams, I thought, that would be in the mix before us and they weren’t in it. But I think it says something about how we run our program. We’re the first Orange County public school team to play in the Open Division.”

The big news of the day locally was the Moore League shakeup, with Compton getting in and Long Beach Poly not making it. The move is somewhat ironic since Tarbabes coach Tony Thomas has been very vocal the past three years about never wanting to play in the Open Division, while Poly coach Shelton Diggs was hoping to make the cut.

Clearly Compton’s 12-point win over Poly on Tuesday night was the deciding factor — in Monday’s rankings, Poly was No. 9 in Division 1AA while Compton was No. 15. The Jackrabbits ended up being the highest-ranked team to not make the Open Division, while Compton was the lowest, which upset Thomas, whose team won a CIF title in Division 2A last season.

“We’ haven’t been ranked well all year,” he said Friday. “We were No. 15 in the Division 1AA CIF polls last week. Last year in Division 1 through 4 all CIF champions got the MVP and the coach of the year except Compton. Someone doesn’t like Compton or me.”

For his part, Diggs was disappointed to not have Poly in the Open Division, in large part because the Jackrabbits would have had a guaranteed state berth if they’d made it. However, the coach said he wasn’t offended by the decision.

“We did not play up to Open Division standards,” he said. “We don’t deserve to be in the Open the way we played sometimes. Hopefully this will light a fire in my team — I understand why CIF left us out.”

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The Poly girls did make the cut, and will likely enter the Open Division as the top seed, with a better season pedigree than Mater Dei and a head-to-head win over Chaminade in hand.

Devin Ugland contributed to this story

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