Eight Orange County boys basketball teams will begin playing this week in the CIF Southern California Regional playoffs.
First-round games are Tuesday in Divisions 1 through 5, which are 16-team divisions. The Open Division is a six-team group and plays first-round games Wednesday.
It’s a second-chance tournament for teams that did not win CIF Southern Section championships, including teams that lost in the CIF-SS semifinals.
San Juan Hills lost by 17 points to Piliobos in the CIF-SS Division 5 semifinals but has a SoCal Regional Division 4 first-round home game Tuesday against Pacific Ridge.
Mater Dei, which lost in the CIF-SS Division 2 semifinals, plays at La Mirada in SoCal Regional Division 1 on Tuesday.
Trabuco Hills lost to Colony in a CIF-SS final Friday. Trabuco Hills plays at home against El Camino Real in a Regional Division 3 game Tuesday.
JSerra lost to Crean Lutheran on Saturday in the CIF-SS Division 1 championship game. JSerra travels to San Diego County to play Francis Parker in a Regional first-round game Tuesday.
Santa Margarita plays at Redondo Union in the SoCal Regional Open Division first round Wednesday.
The SoCal Regional Open Division is a six-team group that also includes CIF-SS Open Division champion Sierra Canyon, Harvard-Westlake, Santa Maria St. Joseph and Sherman Oaks Notre Dame. All of those teams are CIF Southern Section teams except for St. Joseph, a CIF Central Section champion.
Sierra Canyon and Harvard-Westlake have first-round byes. The Santa Margarita-Redondo winner plays at Sierra Canyon in the second round Thursday.
CIF-SS champion Laguna Hills has a Regional 4 first-round home game Tuesday against El Camino Real. CIF-SS Division 1 champion Crean Lutheran is home against Santa Fe Christian in a Regional Division 2 game Tuesday.
All Regional games including the Regional championship games on March 10 are played at hometeam sites.
CIF Southern California Regional and CIF Northern California Regional champions meet in the CIF State Championships on March 13 and 14 in Sacramento.
