arc fall playoff schedule

SoCalHoops ARC Fall League News

ARC Varsity Playoff Schedule
For Saturday 10/31/98 -- (Oct. 27, 1998)

The ARC Fall Varsity League is winding down, and so the playoffs will be held this weekend, starting with the first round on Saturday afternoon. All the games in the Varsity division will be played at Poly High School. Here's the schedule:

1:00 p.m.   Skywalkers v. Hoopshooters
2:00 p.m.   The Park v. ARC Razorbacks
3:00 p.m.   Team Havok v. S.O. Griffins
4:00 p.m.   Sherman Oaks v. Eagles
5:00 p.m.   Monsters v. Crescenta Valley
6:00 p.m.   N Hollywood v. Thousand Oaks
7:00 p.m.   Saracens v. Blue Team
8:00 p.m.   Pasadena v. The Bank

This is the corrected schedule. If you visit the ARC website, the schedule for the 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. games is not correct. The Razorbacks and S.O. Griffins had already played Team Havok and The Park, respectively, and so Rich Goldberg thoughtfully decided to switch these games around as they are now constituted, and they should make for more interesting contests. Havok is a tough team consisting of about half Crespi players and half Chaminade players, while the Griffins is really Buckley's varsity in disguise, so this will be the D-III guys against the D-V guys. In the first game, we know the Skywalkers, and they are mostly from the Antelope Valley area, from a variety of schools, but we haven't seen the Hoopshooters yet, and we'll have a report on them following Saturday's games. The Park is Moorpark's varsity, featuring Todd Tomlinson and Sean Corkery and they'll get to play the Razorbacks, which is a bunch of guys just now going into high school; they were the runners-up this year at the AAU Nationals in Memphis, taking second to the SCA team that won the National Championship which featured Harrison Schaen, a 6'-7" 13 year old.

In the afternoon, look for Sherman Oaks (aka Notre Dame featuring Chris Williams (6'-8" Sr. C/F) who verballed to UMKC, and Cody Pearson (6'-3" So. SG/PG)) to make an impression on the guys from Oak Park (aka the Eagles). At 5:00 p.m. the Monsters of the Midway, featuring Adam Drell (6'-6" Jr. F) and Richard Harrison (6'-4" Sr. SF) will play a team from Crescenta Valley which forfeited it's game last week against Buckley, but if Eric Sondheimer is to be believed, the team will feature freshman Chris Tarne (6'-0" Fr. PG/SG) who Sondheimer ranks as one of the best of the class of 2002. No offense to Chris, because we know him to be a fine player, but how anyone can "rank" a freshman who's never scored a single point in a high school game as one of the best in the class of 2002 is a stretch to us, and while we're on the subject, we can think of any number of other freshmen, all of whom came off of the same ARC 13 and 14 year old teams as Chris who would qualify for the same "Best of 2002" in the Valley area, including Matt Llewellyn (6'-0" Fr. SG) who transferred from Campbell Hall to Loyola; Craig Weinstein (5'-10" Fr. PG/SG) who transferred from Milken to Harvard-Westlake; David Gale (5'-10" Fr. PG/SG) who is at Buckley; Charlie Kranzdorf (6'-1" Fr. SG/SF) who is at Montclair Prep; Chris Tillman (6'-5" Fr. F) who transferred to LA Baptist this year; or Dino Wilburn (6'-2" Fr. SG/SF) who will be playing JV this year at Pasadena and will be on the varsity next year. Oh, and don't forget Harrison Schaen (6'-7" 8th grade C/F) who transferred to St. Bonaventure from Sierra Canyon, and in the process left ARC for SCA and his family also moved from the Valley to Huntingon Beach. Yeah, in our view, any one of these guys could "rank" as some of the best in the class.

Ah, but we digress.

At 6:00 p.m. North Hollywood is really the North Hollywood High team and they will play the real Thousand Oaks team; at 7:00 p.m., look for Harvard-Westlake (aka the Saracens, which for you trivia buffs, was the old name of Harvard before the merger with the all-girls Westlake School) to play Milken (aka the Blue Team), and this will be an exciting rematch. And we're looking for Lee Garson, the coach of H-W to finally take advantage of the opportunity that Halloween affords: We'll see if he really does come in costume for this one. We're guessing that he'll dress as Dr. Burt Stern. Finally, at 8:00 p.m. look for Pasadena, which features a bunch of guys from Pasadena and Muir, including Chris Bennett (6'-10" Sr. C) go up against Eric Rowher (6'-9" Sr. C) who is, we hear, being pursued pretty actively by the Air Force Academy.

The top seeded winners (i.e., those in 8th place or better) will go to play in the semi-finals and ultimately vie for the finals. The lower seeded teams will be eligible to play one additional game on Sunday. Yes, it's a curiously interesting system of "league playoffs" and we really can't figure out the motivation, but then we don't understand a lot of things. In any event, these should be fun and entertaining games. See you there.