RANCHO SANTA MARGARITA – Santa Margarita kept up with St. John Bosco for much of their Trinity League boys basketball game Friday.

St. John Bosco had too many scoring options, though, and used them to beat the Eagles 77-67 at Santa Margarita. It was the second league loss in a row for the Eagles.

The Braves had a three-point lead at the end of the third quarter. They outscored the Eagles 25-18 in the fourth quarter.

Braves senior guard Elzie Harrington, who has signed with USC, scored a game-high 28 points with six 3-pointers, two of them in the fourth quarter. Bosco junior forward Christian Collins scored 16 points, eight of those in the fourth quarter, and junior guard Chris Komin scored 11 points.

“We feel like we can compete with anybody,” Santa Margarita coach Justin Bell said. “We just didn’t make enough plays tonight. We got beat up on the boards, I would assume, I haven’t looked at that yet, and we’ve got to clean that up.”

The clean-up job needs to be done quickly. The teams play each other again Monday at St. John Bosco.

St. John Bosco (21-3 overall) is 5-1 in the Trinity League, tied with Mater Dei (5-1 league) for first place.

The Braves’ league loss was to Mater Dei on Jan. 10. Braves standout Brandon McCoy was injured and did not play in that game.

Santa Margarita (17-5 overall) is 3-2 in league, with its other league loss Wednesday at Mater Dei.

Bell found some good results from Friday’s loss.

“I think we shared the ball well,” he said. “The guys played physical, which I like. I thought we did a pretty solid job on defense.

“We kept (the Braves) out of the lane for the most part. They just hit some really tough shots.”

The Brave hit some tough deep shots. They made 11 of their  21 3-point shot attempts, including going 5 for 5 behind the arc in the fourth quarter.

Santa Margarita 6-9 senior forward Dallas Washington was terrific. He led the Eagles with 21 points and made four 3-pointers.

Eagles junior guard Kaiden Bailey scored 13 points with 10 assists. Junior forward Drew Anderson scored 14 points with seven rebounds.

Santa Margarita, No. 1 in the Orange County Top 25, trailed for much of the game. The Eagles took the lead late in the third quarter 49-47 on a layup by senior Ekene Anyiam-Osigwe off of one of Bailey’s many slick in-the-lane bounce passes.

Harrington made a deep 3 at the end-of-the-quarter buzzer to put St. John Bosco back on top 52-49.

The Braves built their lead to 10 points on a Collins fastbreak dunk with 5:39 left in the game. Santa Margarita made a bit of a run, cutting its deficit to 64-60, but Bosco pulled away again thanks largely to 3s by Komin and Collins in the final three minutes.

St. John Bosco is No. 3 in the CIF Southern Section rankings, behind No. 1 Harvard-Westlake and No. 2 Roosevelt. Santa Margarita is No. 6 in those rankings.

It can be assumed that the elite Open Division of the playoffs will be an eight-team group as it was last season. So the top eight teams in the CIF-SS rankings at the end of the regular season are likely to be in the Open Division when the playoffs begin Feb. 12.

The Maxpreps.com national rankings have St. John Bosco at No. 15.

The Eagles scored the game’s first five points to take a lead that did not last long. St. John Bosco went on an 8-2 run led by Harrington. His 3-pointer with 3:24 to go in the quarter put the Braves on top 8-7, and they grew the lead from there. They had an 18-13 lead at the end of the quarter.

Washington made three of his four second-quarter shots and made three free throws in the period to team with Bailey, who had five assists in the quarter, to spark an Eagles revival.

Trailing by 10 points midway through the quarter, Santa Margarita was down by four points, 36-32, at halftime.

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