<\/p>\n
The Long Beach Poly girls’ basketball team hopped a Thursday night flight to Arizona, where they’ll kick off the Nike Tournament of Champions this morning at 11am in Phoenix. <\/span>For those unversed in the world of girls’ basketball, you might think this is just another December tournament\u2014but you’d be very, very wrong. <\/span>Run by Nike, the TOC is the nation’s annual mecca for prep girls’ hoops, with the best collection of talent a team could play in. <\/span>For Poly, it’s also the key to their national championship hopes.<\/p>\n “It’s the hardest bracket as a whole,” says Poly girls’ basketball coach Carl Buggs, when asked if the TOC is a harder challenge than the CIF section or state bracket. <\/span>“You could technically play a team that could win their state every round, win or lose.”<\/p>\n Today’s game is against Bolingbrook, a quality team from Illinois; if they win, they’ll play the winner of Christ the King and Dillard. <\/span>Should the Rabbits advance beyond that point, things get very interesting. <\/span>Since they’re in the powerhouse Joe Smith Division, two wins would put them in the semifinal, almost assuredly against Mater Dei\u2014the only team in the country ranked over Poly in the MaxPreps Top 100. <\/span>A victory would put them in the number one spot, and square them off against St. Mary’s (presumably), MaxPreps’ number 3 team in the nation. <\/span>In the legendary string of state titles Poly’s had lately, a national championship has been the only prize that’s eluded them. <\/span>Four wins in the next five days, and a typical league\/Southern Section\/State bracket performance could change that. <\/span>Of course, there’s no overlooking anybody in the TOC, so it would be a mistake to get too far ahead.<\/p>\n Still, “it’s definitely in our vision,” says Buggs. <\/span>“We have three major goals we’ve been setting for the last six or seven years\u2014win CIF, win State, be the number one team in the country. <\/span>In order to do that, you need to go through Arizona.”<\/p>\n Come back every day for updates on how the Rabbits are doing. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This weekend the Poly Jackrabbits will be in Arizona at the Nike Tournament of Champions\u2014a chance at a national championship is at stake.<\/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-2542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542","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=2542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"newspack_spnsrs_tax","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newspack_spnsrs_tax?post=2542"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lbpost.com\/sports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}