It happens every high school sports year in every high school sport.

Teams play their best in the playoffs, which is the best time to do so.

Fullerton’s boys basketball team is one of those teams.

The Indians finished third in the six-team Freeway League with a 5-5 league record. They lost their final two regular-season games, league losses to Troy and Sunny Hills.

After four wins in the CIF Southern Section Division 4AA playoffs Fullerton plays in the championship game Friday night against Garden Grove at Garden Grove High.

Fullerton opened the CIF-SS playoffs with a 58-49 win at Garden Grove League champion Santiago, beat Rio Mesa 59-39 at home in the second round, and got a quarterfinals home win against champion Rio Mesa.

In Tuesday’s semifinals Fullerton traveled to play top-seeded Artesia, the 605 League champion that had a 26-5 record and a grand history with players like James Harden and the O’Bannon brothers, Charles and Ed.

“We knew Artesia was good,” said Fullerton third-year coach Erik Kamrath. “There’s a lot of basketball history at that school and it’s tough to walk into that. I looked at our kids’ faces and saw that they weren’t afraid.’

Fullerton won, 58-56. Junior guard Josiah Reed led the Indians with 15 points. Sophomore guard Isaiah Reed scored 13 points with three 3-pointers and senior guard Ezekiel Yousling scored nine points on three 3s.

The Indians practice as hard as they play.

“Our work ethic is through the roof,” said Fullerton junior point guard Christian Hubbard. “We focus on the little things like boxing out on every possession, making the right pass, talking on defense. We have some talent, but we’re not insanely talented, so we have to do those things well.”

Kamrath’s scouting report on 4AA championship game opponent Garden Grove …

“There’s a reason they made it this far,” Kamrath said. “They didn’t get there by chance. They know what they have to do to be successful and they do it well.”

Which sounds like Kamrath is talking about his own team.

NOTES

• Western, led by senior guards Ahmad Hammouri and Jameson Labasan, is making its CIF-SS boys basketball championship game debut Friday in the 4A final at Dos Pueblos in Goleta. Western coach Marc Harrison got the feeling his team could do something special with its 56-47 first-round win over Chadwick, a team that beat Western 53-35 in the Bolsa Grande Tournament in December. “We turned that 18-point loss into a win by ‘getting up’ into the faces of the other team and playing good defense,” Harrison said.

• The CIF-SS office sent to each school playing in a boys or girls basketball championship game a link to purchase game tickets at GoFan.co so that the schools could, if they desired, first provide ticket access to team member families, students and others in their school communities.

• Five of the six Orange County boys basketball teams playing in CIF-SS championship games are public school teams: Dana Hills, Fullerton, Garden Grove, San Juan Hills and Western. JSerra is the county’s only private school team in a boys basketball final.

• Friday will be a busy day at JSerra. The Lions’ boys soccer team plays at home against Servite in the CIF-SS Division 1 championship game at 5 p.m. JSerra’s boys basketball team is home for a 7 p.m. game against St. Bernard in the Division 1 final. BallySports.com will live stream that game.

• Servite swept its two Trinity League soccer games against JSerra. The Friars won 4-0 at Servite, 3-1 at JSerra.

• Sunny Hills’s boys soccer team plays Norte Vista at Ramona High on Saturday at 5 p.m. in the Division 3 championship game. Sunny Hills has won 13 of its past 14 games.

• Orange County has several candidates who could win medals at the CIF State Wrestling Championships this week, including El Dorado sophomore Isaiah Quintero at 106 pounds. Quintero might see Gilroy freshman Isaiah Cortez in the finals. Cortez and Quintero are familiar foes, having wrestled against each other and worked out together in the offseason.

• Orange Lutheran’s baseball team, ranked No. 6 in the nation by MaxPreps.com, won the championship of the Prep Baseball Report Preseason Invitational with a 12-1 win over Yucaipa on Saturday. The Lancers’ other tournament wins were over Gahr 2-1, Ayala 4-3 and Huntington Beach 5-0. The tournament had “Preseason” in the title but those games count in regular-season records.

• Loyola might be the best CIF-SS boys volleyball team this season. The Cubs swept Mater Dei in three sets Wednesday at Loyola. Two of Orange County’s top teams, Corona del Mar and Newport Harbor, get a crack at Loyola next month – Corona del Mar at Loyola on March 8, Loyola at Newport Harbor on March 12.

• Recent county football head coaching hires: longtime Sunny Hills assistant coach Phil Hughes at Canyon; former Orange Lutheran head coach JP Presley at Esperanza; and former El Dorado and Yorba Linda assistant Fred Manriquez at Whittier Christian.

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• The National Federation of State High School Associations this week reported that a survey of state high school associations shows that approximately 50,000 people stopped being high school officials since the 2018-19 school year. Orange County officiating groups have experienced reductions, too. If spectators who complain about officials step forward to join an officials association to show how much better they are at officiating, the shortages would end.