Basha is the defending Arizona Open Division champion and 16th in the country on our board. It went to Orange Coast College on Friday night and lost 23-17 to Orange Lutheran, our SoCal No. 7.
Friday morning we wrote that this was the game Arizona could least afford to lose.
Arizona lost it. And then, several hundred miles east and a couple of hours later, Arizona won the other one.
The rematch went the other way
These two played last September at Basha and Basha won 30-24, when Orange Lutheran was ranked 23rd in the country. The Lancers made the trip this time in reverse, took the same six-point margin and handed it back.
Eric Sondheimer of the Los Angeles Times posted the final at 10:10 Pacific: Orange Lutheran 23, Basha 17. Keith Smith had it 23-17 with a minute left in the fourth, which tells you the Bears were still on the field with a chance and did not convert it. Orange Lutheran is 2-1.
That is the whole shape we have. Nobody has filed a scoring sequence and we are not inventing one at this hour.
What it costs Arizona, and what Arizona got back
Here is the part that makes Friday strange rather than simply bad for that state.
Basha lost. In the same window, Liberty of Peoria beat Corner Canyon 38-24, scoring the last 24 points against a program that was 14th in the country and No. 1 in Utah.
So Arizona's flagship went to California and came home beaten by six, and Arizona's fourth-ranked team beat a top-15 opponent by scoring 24 unanswered on it. Both of those things are true about the same state on the same night, and they do not point the same direction.
We have written for three weeks that Arizona was the board we understood least. Friday did not fix that. Friday made it worse in the productive way, which is that we now have two results instead of two assumptions.
The SoCal side of it
Do not let the Arizona framing bury what Orange Lutheran just did.
The Lancers were our SoCal No. 7 going in. They have now beaten a defending state champion that we rank 16th nationally, at a neutral site, in a rematch of a game they lost.
Sondheimer, who has watched more Southern California football than anyone alive, posted this three minutes after the final: three weeks into the season, he would say No. 1 in Southern California is wide open, that a lot of good teams have flaws, and that we will see who fixes them by the end of the season.
That is a person who covers this every week telling you the top of that region is not settled. Friday is evidence for him.
Where it lands
Not here. Boards are Monday, built against every result from the weekend, and there were a lot of them.
What we will say is that two of the three things we flagged on Friday morning as the games that would move our boards have now happened, and both went against the favorite. That is a good Friday for the sport and a long Monday for us.
What we could not confirm
The scoring sequence, individual statistics on either side, and Basha's record after the game.
Attendance, and anything from either sideline.
The final rests on Sondheimer plus a fourth-quarter update from Keith Smith plus our own card from the stadium. No newsroom has posted a full write-up yet. When one does, this piece gets whatever it adds.
