Brea-Olinda Is the No. 1 Seed inGirls Playoffs

Brea-Olinda High School, Orange County’s top-ranked girls basketball team, earned the No. 1 seed in the Southern Section 3-A playoffs as pairings in five divisions were announced on Monday at the CIF office in Cerritos.

The Wildcats (25-0) will play host to Irvine (9-11) in the first round, which begins Saturday. Wild-card games are scheduled for Wednesday.

Brea was elevated to the 3-A division this season after losing in the 2-A final the past two years.

In other 3-A games, Sea View League champion Woodbridge (22-3) drew Fontana (20-4). The Steelers placed third in the Citrus Belt League but that was behind fourth-seeded Riverside Poly (19-2) and Eisenhower (19-4). The Warriors will be without center Sharon Lyon, their leading scorer and rebounder. She is academically ineligible.

In the 4-A, Ocean View was the victim of a second coin flip. The Seahawks clinched the Sunset League co-championship with Fountain Valley with wins over Huntington Beach and Westminster last week.

But on Thursday, Ocean View lost a coin flip to decide which school would be designated as the league’s No. 1 team. It was crucial, since the team designated as the champion usually draws a third-place team in the pairings.

Instead, the Seahawks drew Ocean League runner-up Inglewood. Since both teams officially were second-place finishers, a coin flip on Monday determined who would get home-court honors.

Ocean View lost that flip, too.

“I hope three, the game, is a charm because we’ve had a pretty bad run of luck,” Seahawk Coach Kelly Painter said.

Ocean View beat Inglewood, 39-38, in the season opener for both teams, but Painter doesn’t put much weight in that victory at home.

“It was a typical first game,” he said. “Both teams didn’t play very well. We only scored 39 points and we’ve been averaging 65 points a game since then.”

Also in the 4-A, Angelus League champion Mater Dei (23-3), the county’s No. 4 team, will open at home against Rio Mesa of Oxnard. Fountain Valley (18-6), thanks to the flip against Ocean View, will open at home against Hawthorne (17-7) of the Ocean League.

In the 2-A division, La Quinta (21-4) was awarded the top seed and will be at home against Buena Park (15-4).