It’s the biggest week of the season so far, with playoff-stakes football, CIF postseason matches in three sports, and the kickoff to Long Beach State basketball! We’ll lace your boots up on the city’s biggest games.
TUESDAY
Tuesday officially starts the CIF playoffs for team sports, as Long Beach tennis, water polo, and volleyball teams get going. Check the front page for game-by-game previews and bracket analysis, but the big highlights from today are Poly girls’ tennis hosting Corona Centennial, Millikan boys’ water polo hosting Capistrano Valley, and Lakewood girls’ volleyball hosting Thousand Oaks. Phew—that’s going to make for busy sportswriters. We’re also doing our weekly Beach Sports Radio show at noon, which you can listen to live at LongBeachState.com. There’s also a Century Club meeting Tuesday night at the Grand, at 6pm.
WEDNESDAY
This is the one day of the week to grab a breather! We’ll be at the Beach Club at 2pm recording the all-football episode of SportsNight if you want to drop by.
THURSDAY
Hoo boy. As of Thursday, there are no more byes in the CIF brackets, so everyone is playing. In girls’ tennis, top Moore League seed Wilson will host the winner of Hart and Righetti; in water polo, top-seed Wilson welcomes the winner of ML King/San Marino to the Belmont, and in girls’ volleyball, top-seed Wilson will have a home match against the winner of Newbury Park and Edison. Yikes, looks like the Fall season was a good time to be a fan of Wilson.
FRIDAY
Football time! Two huge games as Wilson hosts Lakewood for the Moore League title and the league’s top CIF seed, and Poly visits Compton with a third-seed playoff spot on the line—whoever wins, gets it. Whoever loses, starts thinking about getting revenge next year. Millikan will take it easy knowing they’re the four-seed no matter what, and Jordan Cabrillo will play for the right to end the season on a positive note.
SATURDAY
Yes, the CIF playoffs continue today—we’ll likely have teams still alive in tennis, water polo and volleyball, but Saturday is for the 49ers. Long Beach State’s homecoming is today, with all kinds of awesome pre-game festivities in the parking lot (our sponsor Legends will be there with a great setup)…oh yeah, and the men’s basketball team is starting their season against Alaska-Anchorage or something. 4pm, in the Pyramid—be there.
SUNDAY
Hooray! For high school football fans, Sunday is Christmas, Thanksgiving, Halloween, and Spring Break all rolled into one—it’s bracket day! At 10am at the CIF-SS office in Los Al, the Pac-5’s playoff brackets will be released. We’ll post them on the site as soon as we get them, and spend the first part of the morning talking to Moore League coaches on site to see what they think of their draws.