Crean Lutheran boys basketball coach Austin Loeb wishes his team was playing a game this week.
The Saints will have a break of 12 or 14 days before they play their first playoff game.
Loeb doesn’t like it, but Crean Lutheran will try to make the most of it.
“It’s bad,” he said. “But I’m fine with it because we’re banged up and this is a chance to have like a minicamp before we go into the playoffs.”
Crean Lutheran clinched the Crestview League championship last week when it beat La Habra, 76-67, and Foothill, 78-65. The Saints are 21-7 overall and 7-1 in league. La Habra is in second place at 5-2 with Canyon and Cypress tied for third at 3-4.
The win over Foothill on Friday was Crean Lutheran’s 28th game, the most allowed by the CIF Southern Section in the regular season.
The CIF-SS playoff brackets will be released Saturday at noon.
Caden Jones (0) of Crean Lutheran passes under pressure from Richard Gonzales (30) La Habra in a Crestview League boys basketball game at Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine on Tuesday, January 27, 2026. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)Crean Lutheran was No. 12 in the latest computer rankings for the Southern Section’s 516 boys basketball teams. The final regular-season ranking will be used by the CIF-SS office to place teams into playoff divisions and seed them within those divisions.
The elite Open Division could be an eight-team group or larger. Last season’s Open Division was a 10-team group.
Crean Lutheran could be an Open Division team or could be one of CIF-SS Division 1’s higher-seeded teams.
“I’m just letting things play out,” said Loeb, a Crean Lutheran assistant coach last season who was promoted when Nate Klitzing left to become the coach at Orange Lutheran. “We’re right on that borderline and it’s up to CIF to decide. We’re going to be OK with either one.”
NOTES
The Southern Section will have 10 playoff divisions. The “A” and “AA” titles – Division 2AA, Division 2A, etc. – have been eliminated. The Open Division will have a pool-play format while there will be single-elimination brackets for Divisions 1-9. …
The playoffs begin Feb. 11 for divisions with 32-team brackets. Open Division pool play begins Feb. 13. …
Tesoro (24-3 overall) was 7-0 in the South Coast League and on a 10-game winning streak going into its league finale Monday against San Clemente. The Titans have a solid roster led by senior guards Max Draper, who was last season’s CIF-SS Division 3 boys volleyball player of the year, and Carson Hatch. “We have 13 guys on the team,” Tesoro coach Steve Garrett said, “and we need all 13 of them for us to win.” …
If there is still a tie for third place in the Crestview League after Tuesday night’s games, there would be a Canyon-Cypress game Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. at Sunny Hills High to decide third place. The league’s top three finishers automatically qualify for the playoffs. Last season, Canyon beat Cypress in a third-place tiebreaker game. …
Acen Jimenez (24) of La Habra over Caden Jones (0) of Crean Lutheran in a Crestview League boys basketball game at Crean Lutheran High School in Irvine on Tuesday, January 27, 2026. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)La Habra has second place secured in the Crestview League, but Highlanders coach Aaron Riekenberg said his team would still go all-out in their game against Canyon on Tuesday. “We’ll approach it like any other game,” Riekenberg said. “We had a bye this past Friday so it’s important to continue to learn good habits.” …
The Trinity League boys basketball tournament started Monday night and continues Tuesday and Wednesday at Hope International University in Fullerton. On Wednesday, the third-place game is at 5:30 p.m. and the championship game at 7:30 p.m.
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