Four Oakland high school basketball teams have made it to the California Interscholastic Federation Northern California regional championship games, and one is guaranteed to play in the CIF State Finals in Sacramento on Saturday.
The Oakland Tech and Oakland High boys will face each other in this year’s Division II NorCal championship game on Tuesday evening in Oakland. The game will be a rematch of 2023’s thrilling Division III NorCal boys’ final, which drew over 2,500 fans to Laney College.
The Wildcats won that NorCal title game en route to a state championship.
Like last season, this will be the fourth meeting of the year between the two teams. Once again, Tech dominated the Oakland Athletic League season and the Oakland Section tournament. However, the Bulldogs are hoping for a different result from last year in the regional tourney.
Tech coach Karega Hart and O-High coach Orlando Watkins have both been building their programs for over a decade. Watkins has coached the Wildcats since 2006, and Hart has been at Tech since 2010.
Overall, Tech is 23-12 against O-High since Hart came back to coach his alma mater.
Though Hart’s teams have done better in the regular season and section tournaments, Watkins’ Wildcats have enjoyed more success at the regional level. In addition to last year’s NorCal and state titles, Watkins also led his team to a 2022 NorCal semifinals appearance. Prior to 2023, Tech had never been to the regional semifinals under Hart. He is seeking his first trip to the state finals.
What the two coaches have accomplished in the Town is noteworthy. They both inherited programs that were at the bottom of the OAL. They don’t necessarily get the top talent in the region, but they do get good players that buy into their team cultures. In the past few years, that has turned both schools into winning programs.
It remains to be seen where this year’s NorCal championship game will be played, but Tech is officially the home team, and it’s ultimately their call. When the NorCal finals game was moved from Tech to Laney College to accommodate a larger crowd last year, you could argue that the Bulldogs lost their home court advantage and they may opt to keep the game at Tech this year.
Oakland High and Bishop O’Dowd girls are chasing postseason glory
The O-High boys aren’t the only Wildcats squad still hooping in March. Despite having to play three straight road games as the #13 seed in the Division V bracket, the O-High girls made it to the NorCal final. They play Crystal Springs Uplands of Hillsborough on Tuesday.
In 2019, the O-High girls won the school’s first ever state championship in basketball. There hasn’t been as much buzz about the team this year, despite performances that landed them in second place in league and section, but it looks like the dawn of a new era for the team.
After losing to AIMS in the Oakland section semifinals last year, O-High poached coach Nita Simpson away from AIMS over the summer. Simpson brought former AIMS junior center Ojiugo Egeonu with her, and the Wildcats have dramatically improved.
The top-ranked team from Oakland remaining in the tourney, the Bishop O’Dowd girls, host Carondelet of Concord in the NorCal Division I final. It’s a rematch of the North Coast Section third-place game won by O’Dowd just two weeks ago.
Coach Malik McCord has won 3 state championships since he became head coach in 2009, and is seeking his seventh NorCal title.
Winners of the Western Alameda County – Foothill league, O’Dowd has a 23-6 record.
The Oakland Tech girls’ dynasty suffered a setback on Saturday when Pleasant Valley’s AJ Gambol hit a baseline jumper as the buzzer sounded in Chico. The Lady Bulldogs had won back-to-back-to-back state titles under coach Leroy Hurt.
The Tech senior class lost its first playoff game ever, and the Lady Bulldogs are stopped short of the NorCal title game for the first time since 2018.
All of these CIF Northern California regional tournament championship games will be played on Tuesday, March 5, at 7 p.m. Tickets for all games can be purchased from GoFan.
