<\/p>\n
A quick look at what’s standing in front of the two Long Beach high schools this afternoon as they take the court in first-round CIF action.<\/p>\n
Wilson vs. El Toro, Long Beach State Pool 3pm<\/strong> Thanks to El Toro’s 9-7 win over San Marcos in Tuesday’s wild card round, they’re the lucky team that gets welcomed into the Long Beach State campus pool by Tony Martinho’s Wilson Bruins Wednesday afternoon. <\/span>The third-seed from the Sea View League, El Toro isn’t a team to take likely, like most of the Division 1 bracket. <\/span>They have wins this season over Santa Margarita and Huntington Beach, and have hung tough both times they played Los Al, a team Wilson has struggled against as well.<\/p>\n Taylor Adair, Justine Morgan, and Allison Skaggs are the big goal-scorers for El Toro, and if Wilson wants to advance (as they’re favored to) they’ll need to contain those three shooters, and find a way to solve Emily Browning’s presence in the net. <\/span>When Browning plays big, El Toro is hard to beat\u2014she had 10 saves against San Marcos.<\/p>\n Should the Bruins beat El Toro, they’ll likely face familiar foe Los Al in the second round\u2014the Griffins host Irvine Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n Poly @ Corona Del Mar, 3pm<\/strong> Poly is the definitive underdog when they head to Corona Del Mar Wednesday afternoon, but that’s a role the Rabbits relish; it’s already been a year of upward movement for Poly, as they beat Millikan to finish second in league for the first time in years. <\/span>But they’re facing a very tough team in Corona Del Mar, the champions of the Pacific Coast League. Corona Del Mar split a pair of games against Wilson, losing the first 7-5 and winning the second, 8-7. <\/span>They have an offense capable of exploding in big runs\u2014as shown in the win over Wilson, when they went from silence in the first quarter to 7 goals in the final three frames, while holding the Bruins to 4. They’re a dangerous team, as well, because they play mostly seniors who have a lot of experience. <\/span>Senior Margot Money is the big scorer, and if Poly wants to stand a chance on Wednesday, shutting her down has to be the top priority; if they can do that, then they can worry about scoring on super sophomore sensation Alex Musselman, the net-minder who’s averaging almost ten saves a game. Should the Rabbits pull off the upset, the road won’t get any easier\u2014barring a major upset, they’d host Rosary in the second round; Rosary was the Trinity League champion this year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A quick look at what’s standing in front of the two Long Beach high schools this afternoon as they take the court in first-round CIF action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"newspack_sponsor_sponsorship_scope":"","newspack_sponsor_native_byline_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_native_category_display":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_style":"inherit","newspack_sponsor_underwriter_placement":"inherit","inline_featured_image":false,"newspack_ads_suppress_ads":false,"newspack_popups_has_disabled_popups":"","_":"","_author_alias":"","cap-aim":"","cap-description":"","cap-display_name":"","cap-first_name":"","cap-jabber":"","cap-last_name":"","cap-linked_account":"","cap-newspack_employer":"","cap-newspack_job_title":"","cap-newspack_phone_number":"","cap-newspack_role":"","cap-user_email":"","cap-user_login":"","cap-website":"","cap-yahooim":"","newspack_article_summary":"","newspack_email_html":"","newspack_email_type":"","newspack_featured_image_position":"","newspack_hide_page_title":"","newspack_hide_updated_date":false,"newspack_post_subtitle":"","newspack_show_share_buttons":"","newspack_sponsor_byline_prefix":"","newspack_sponsor_disclaimer_override":"","newspack_sponsor_flag_override":"","newspack_sponsor_only_direct":"","newspack_sponsor_url":"","newspack_article_summary_title":"Overview:","newspack_show_updated_date":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"newspack_spnsrs_tax":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-2117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2117\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2117"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}