dorsey will compete in playoffs

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SoCalHoops High School News

Dorsey Will Be Eligible For
L.A. City Section Playoffs--(Feb. 1, 2002)

Yesterday's LA Times carried a small little blurb (but then again, unless it's written by Eric Sondheimer and is an anti-transfer diatribe, everything's a small blurb now in the Times) about LA Dorsey and the consequences of their game-ending brawl with Southern Section Gardena Serra. The game was called early and awarded as a win to Serra, but beyond that, the LA City Section has issued some sanctions against Dorsey, over which it has jurisdiction. Serra, on the other hand, has not (yet, if it ever) been sanctioned for the events at that game.

The Times' Ben Bolch, who is otherwise doing a phenomenal job covering preps for the paper's print version and its newly revitalized web-based prep's section, wrote the story yesterday in which he detailed the sanctions imposed against Dorsey by Jeff Halperin, the assistant commissioner of the LA City Section.

Among the sanctions was that Dorsey would not be permitted to participate in the City Section playoffs.

Turns out this was a mistake, and Ben promptly came over to our message board to announce that the story contained a huge error which was in part the result of a miscommunication between he and Halperin. The Times promised to run a retraction today, and they did:

Dorsey Will Be Allowed To Compete in Playoffs

The Dorsey High boys' basketball team has not been declared ineligible for the City Section playoffs, Jeff Halpern, an assistant commissioner for the section, said Thursday.

However, two Dorsey reserves, Garnett Pickens and Michael Ledwith-Ball, will remain suspended for the remainder of the season for their role in a December fight with Gardena Serra players. Dorsey, which will be on probation for the remainder of the season, will take a loss in the intersectional game, which was called after the third quarter, with Serra leading, 54-45.

Other than this sanction glitch, Dorsey had been on a roll lately. They are the only team in recent memory to have beaten Crenshaw twice and were headed for either the No. 3 or 4 seed in the City Section Championship bracket before the news that they would lose two players to ineligibility. With their loss to Fremont this week, they will likely slip to No. 4 or 5, but there's still a week left, so their business isn't quite finished just yet, and a top seed is not necessarily in the bag.