CCS, NCS Open Division basketball finals: What to know

The stage is set for what could be a magical night of high school basketball.

The Central Coast Section boys and girls Open Division finals Friday will be played at Stanford’s Maples Pavilion for the first time since 1982.

Santa Clara University, the section’s longtime home for its marquee basketball championships, was unavailable, so the CCS brass worked its magic and secured Stanford.

Nice fallback plan.

The North Coast Section will be back at Saint Mary’s College on Friday for its inaugural Open Division title games.

Two venues, eight heavyweight teams, four major championships on the line.

Here’s a look at the matchups:

NCS Open boys: Bishop O’Dowd vs. Dublin

In our final Bay Area Preps HQ rankings of the regular season, Bishop O’Dowd came in at No. 1, three spots ahead of Dublin, which jumped from eighth to fourth after winning the East Bay Athletic League championship.

The NCS seeding committee saw things a little differently than the BAPrepsHQ voters, seeding Dublin No. 1 and O’Dowd third in the section’s six-team Open Division.

Well, Friday night at Saint Mary’s College, the teams can settle the debate and make history in the process as they vie for the NCS’s first Open Division crown.

Section titles are practically a birthright for O’Dowd. The Oakland powerhouse has won 18 of them, most recently a Division II title in 2018.

A win by Dublin on Friday would be historic on multiple levels. The Gaels have never won an NCS championship in boys basketball, though they came oh-so-close to claiming one in 2017, falling to De La Salle 53-51 in the Division I final at Saint Mary’s.

“I am just thankful to be able to play on Friday,” Dublin coach Tom Costello said after the Gaels beat Campolindo 64-55 in the semifinals. “I am just kind of enjoying this one right now.”

O’Dowd and Dublin have not met since the teams’ current seniors were in eighth grade. Dublin won 62-48 at the Tip-Off Classic in Newark.

CCS Open boys: Bellarmine vs. Mitty

These West Catholic Athletic League powers will each be appearing in their 20th section championship game, the third against one another.

They split the previous two head-to-head title game matchups, with Bellarmine winning 65-58 in 2018 and Mitty prevailing 57-54 a year earlier.

They also split two head-to-head matchups during league play this season, both winning at the other’s gym. Bellarmine won 68-56 on Jan. 10 and Mitty got some payback three weeks later, 59-55.

The teams went on to share the league championship with Archbishop Riordan, which was bounced from the Open Division playoffs in the first round.

Bellarmine, seeded third, is making its fifth consecutive trip to the Open final but hoping to avoid a fourth loss on the section’s biggest stage.

Top seed Mitty is the only program to win more than one CCS Open crown since the section added the best-of-the-best division in 2013. The Monarchs are aiming for their fourth Friday.

As with the NCS seedings, BAPrepsHQ voters didn’t see eye-to-eye with the selection committee. Bellarmine was ranked third in our final regular-season poll, three spots ahead of Mitty, which actually had the same amount of voting points as No. 4 Dublin and No. 5 Campolindo but slipped via a tiebreaker.

NCS Open girls: Cardinal Newman vs. St. Joseph Notre Dame

Given all that St. Joseph Notre Dame has been through for more than a month, its appearance in the first NCS Open Division final is quite remarkable.

Six weeks ago, the team’s emotional rollercoaster began when coach Shawn Hipol stepped down days after an administrator at the school sounded the alarm bells in the wake of the Pilots’ 91-4 rout of Redwood Christian.

The blowout was nothing new at SJND.

The Pilots were built to compete at the highest level but placed in a league far below their tier, a mistake that was rectified late last month when the NCS moved the school’s girls and boys basketball programs to the stronger West Alameda County Conference starting next season.

Too late for Hipol, whose impact before he departed is still paying off.

SJND was seeded No. 1 in the NCS’s six-team Open Division largely because of one of Hipol’s final acts, a 68-60 victory over Salesian that followed the Redwood Christian blowout.

Assistant Brian Sato has stepped in for Hipol these past six weeks and Wednesday guided the team to its biggest victory since the coach’s resignation, a come-from-behind triumph over Bishop O’Dowd in the semifinals.

Hipol sent the team a congratulatory text afterward.

Thursday, in a text to Bay Area Preps HQ, Hipol wrote, “I am so proud of my kids for their focus, leadership, team spirit in this difficult time. The ability to fight, prepare, and execute is truly amazing to see from this group of young ladies.”

The team’s challenge Friday: Try slowing Cardinal Newman’s Anya Choice, who scored 43 points (34 in the second half) to lead her team past second-seeded Salesian 64-59 in the semifinals.

CCS Open girls: Pinewood vs. Mitty

The two best girls programs in the CCS will meet for the section’s premier prize for the fifth consecutive season.

Mitty has won the previous four, with only one being decided by single digits.

This one will be another enormous challenge for Pinewood, which has only three losses but hasn’t been nearly as dominant as Mitty.

The Monarchs (23-3) are ranked No. 4 both nationally and in the state by MaxPreps. They are riding a 16-game winning streak that is filled with only blowouts, including against heavyweights like St. Joseph Notre Dame (75-39 and 60-39 wins) and Bishop O’Dowd (64-44 win).

Mitty’s average margin of victory in its current run: 36.6 points.

And this after bidding farewell to last season’s national player of the year Haley Jones, the program’s four-year sensation now in her freshman season at Stanford.

In its semifinal rout of St. Ignatius on Wednesday, Mitty had 13 players score but only one in double digits — Olivia Williams, with 11. The junior is in her second season at Mitty after transferring from Pinewood.

Mitty has dominated the series against Pinewood, but Pinewood’s victory over the Monarchs in 2018 was a doozy — triple overtime for the Northern California Open Division title.

Friday’s schedule

CCS Open finals at Stanford

Girls: No. 2 Pinewood vs. No. 1 Archbishop Mitty, 6 p.m.

Boys: No. 3 Bellarmine vs. No. 1 Mitty, 8 p.m.

NCS Open finals at Saint Mary’s College

Girls: No. 3 Cardinal Newman vs. No. 1 St. Joseph Notre Dame, 6 p.m.

Boys: No. 3 Bishop O’Dowd vs. No. 1 Dublin, 8 p.m.