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Pool play for the 2025 CIF Southern Section Boys' Basketball Championships continued on Tuesday and Tyran Stokes, the No. 1-ranked junior, led the Notre Dame (Sherman Oaks) Knights to a big victory during their third game of pool play against the Santa Margarita Eagles.
The five-star small forward scored 25 points, leading the Knights to a 67-59 win. This was a big win on the road for the No. 5 seeded Notre Dame (Sherman Oaks), beating the No. 4 seed in the Open Division playoffs. Stokes' team has three wins in pool play and a strong chance of getting to the next stage of the playoffs.
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The Knights began pool play with a close 71-68 victory over JSerra Catholic on February 12 before defeating La Mirada 71-65. Stokes and Notre Dame (Sherman Oaks) are in Pool A, which also features No. 1 seed Harvard Westlake, who they will face on Friday.
The victory over Santa Margarita moves the Knights to a 25-6 record for the 2024-2025 season; Stokes & Co. also have a 5-2 record in the Mission League, putting them in third place.
Despite their third seed in the Mission League, the Knights did take second place after beating Bryce James and the No. 2 seed Sierra Canyon in the Mission League Tournament semifinal before losing to eventual winner Harvard Westlake.
Tyran Stokes and Notre Dame (Sherman Oaks) have tall task in rematch vs. Nikolas Khamenia and Harvard Westlake
With a 29-1 record, Harvard Westlake is the No. 1 seed in the 2025 CIF Southern Section Boys' Basketball Championships Open Division playoffs. Led by four-star Duke signee Nikolas Khamenia, the Harvard Westlake had been undefeated in the Mission League and has only lost to Timpview High School in an upset. The team is ranked No. 2 in the nation by MaxPreps.
This means that the team possibly standing between Notre Dame (SO) and the next round of the playoffs is the second-best team in the country. To make things harder for the Knights, Harvard Westlake has also beaten the team twice this season, the first on January 24, 73-63, and the second time in the Mission League Tournament final on Feb. 5, 73-64.
In the next round, the top teams of each pool will enter a single-elimination bracket tournament, with the final game scheduled for March 1.
