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Bishop basketball is the talk of the town

Saturday, February 26, 2011 By 8 Comments

It’s Basketball Heaven at Bishop Diego these days.

The success of the boys and girls teams in the postseason has the campus and the community buzzing.

The Cardinal girls will play in the CIF Division 5A semifinals on Saturday against second-seeded Chadwick. The game is at 7 p.m. at Santa Barbara High.

The Bishop boys could have played their 6AA semifinal against Orangewood Academy on Saturday, but the school declined because it wants full support for the girls team that night. Orangewood couldn’t play on Friday, so the game was pushed to Monday night at Liberty Christian in Huntington Beach.

“We booked two rooter buses for the Monday game, and we expect great support for the girls semifinal at Santa Barbara on Saturday night,” said Bishop athletic director Dan Peeters, a former hoopster at Bishop.

Peeters said the spirit has been high on campus over the basketball teams’ playoff run. The Brickhouse has been a madhouse during games.

This is the first time in school history that both the boys and girls teams have advanced to the semifinals in the same season.

“The gym has been packed for every game, and the atmosphere has been really tremendous,” Peeters said. “The Bishop community is truly special. Our kids love to support one another.”

It helps that both teams have fine coaches. Dean Prophet came up from Ventura to take over the boys program this year and guided it to a 20-win season and a Frontier League championship.

Burich kept his team together during a tough Tri-Valley League campaign and has it one win from the CIF final.
 
“Both coach Prophet and Burich have done an outstanding job preparing their players to be on this stage,” said Peeters. “They are tremendous coaches, and quality people.  Their commitment and dedication to their programs, especially the work in summer with the kids is paying off.

“The boys have several returning upperclassmen whose development as players and people are in large part to the coaching and positive influence of former Coach Ray Vazquez.”

Filed Under: Bishop Diego, Boys Basketball, Girls Basketball Tagged With: , , ,
  • Local Sports Fan

    Congrats to the Bishop teams but how would they do if they played in a tougher CIF division like SB and DP? Just asking.
    GO CARDINALS!!

    • dfkjnajn

      Well bishop would get smashed, but Bishop has around 300 kids attending the school. SB and DP both have at least a couple thousand each that go to their schools. So, obviously SB and DP have to be in the higher division with schools that have the same attendance. That is the same for Bishop who plays against schools who only have 300 kids as well. The success Bishop is having is equal to the same success a DP or SB because they are in the divisions according to school size. People are quick to forget that Bishop is just a small school, and no bigger than all of the schools they have played in the playoffs. So, yes Bishop would get smashed by being in Div. 1 or Div. 2 simply because the school sizes are completely different. Bishop is also not a private school that is into recruiting players, unlike many of the private school powerhouses (Mater Dei).

    • High School Hoops Fan

      That’s like comparing apples and oranges. SB got knocked out of the playoffs by a Chino team that has a 27-2 record. DP got knocked out by a Harvard-Westlake team whose entire basketball team was recruited from the Los Angeles metropolitan area. In other words they were all on basketball scholarships whereas the DP and SB players were local girls who played Page Center and Blazers club basketball since 6th grade. Not really fair but that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Lucky for Bishop they didn’t have to play teams of that high caliber.

  • Just Asking

    What do you mean by “hilarious?”

  • The Quiet Storm

    Yes, having to play larger schools, does give those schools more of an advantage because they have more kids pick from. Bottom line, is that each team can only play 5 players at a time!..90% of the Bishop’s enrollment play 2 or more sports! I have seen many other larger schools, only get a very small amount of players out for football, basketball and baseball teams. Bishop does very well, in all sports when playing larger schools. In fact, 99% of the schools Bishop plays in all Boys/Girls sports, are much bigger! To have 2 teams, in the semi-finals in basketball, is outstanding,,,,, No matter what the size of the school it is!!!

  • Anonymous

    One thing about Coach Vasquez and Coach Rivera, they have class and would never post a criticism towards any coach publicly. They are and have always been about building character so that the boys they coach can become men of character. They are celebrating right a long with the Bishop community. Thanks Ray and Ben!

  • Veritas_vino1

    What I mean by hilarious is:
    I have never seen worse game coaching in my life than the job done at Bishop this year with the boys varsity. It’s not even debatable. They give up more points with their press and have even pressed when ahead at the end which continually lets teams back into the game. Their new coach is reportedly a nice guy but I dare you to argue he knows what he is doing…;

    The division they are playing in is largely devoid of basketball players.

    In defense of Bishop they ARE finally playing against teams their own size. So Bishop deserves to be in this division and they DO NOT recruit like many smaller schools.
    Coach Ray and Ben were both great coaches that prepared this group. Remember, the bulk of this years varsity team won their JV league last year and only had one or two losses. Coach Ray played in the TVL which is a world apart from the Frontier League they are now playing in.

  • Wilson

    Well I guess that people can quit talking about Bishop girls basketball after their ouster from the CIF playoffs .last night. Congrats on a successful season. Hopefully the boys will win tomorrow night or else they won’t be the talk of the town either. Just saying.