{"id":430073,"date":"2026-01-22T14:05:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/430073\/"},"modified":"2026-01-22T14:05:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-22T14:05:07","slug":"prep-talk-the-marcaccini-family-is-back-in-high-school-basketball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/430073\/","title":{"rendered":"Prep talk: The Marcaccini family is back in high school basketball"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Monte Marcaccini was one of the best basketball players in Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High history, <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/archives\/la-xpm-1993-08-25-sp-27879-story.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">leading the Knights to a 1993 Southern Section Division III-A championship.<\/a> He was a 6-foot-5 guard who turned down a scholarship to Indiana to play club ball in Italy, then ended up at Pepperdine and later Virginia before playing overseas.<\/p>\n<p>Now Marcaccini, 51, is back in high school basketball, serving as an assistant coach at Oaks Christian High, where his son, James, is a 6-3 freshman playing for the 20-4 Lions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe loves the game and works hard,\u201d Monte said. \u201cI was a lot smaller than he was. He\u2019s a much better player than I was as a freshman.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Monte was known for being a little flamboyant and trash talking with the best. He\u2019d tell anyone and everyone he could beat you one on one.<\/p>\n<p>So who wins when it\u2019s father vs. son these days?<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow it would be pretty close,\u201d the father said. \u201cI would be worried now.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Monte started a private business 25 years ago using his Italian roots \u2014 gelato, a frozen dessert. <\/p>\n<p>Monte played for coach Mick Cady at Notre Dame. Cady also was the high school coach in Northern California for Oaks Christian coach Mark Amaral and recently dropped by to give a pep talk to the Oaks Christian players. <\/p>\n<p>The big question is whether the son talks more than the father.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI talked way more. He\u2019s much more of a gentleman,\u201d Monte said.<\/p>\n<p>This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email eric.sondheimer@latimes.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Monte Marcaccini was one of the best basketball players in Sherman Oaks Notre Dame High history, leading the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":430074,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,225299,225296,32893,225295,225297,225300,50916,12268,225298,225293,225292,8443,225294,120241,9705,85],"class_list":["post-430073","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-club-ball","tag-coach-mick-cady","tag-father","tag-freshman-playing","tag-frozen-dessert","tag-gelato","tag-high-school-basketball","tag-indiana","tag-italian-root","tag-marcaccini-family","tag-monte-marcaccini","tag-notre-dame","tag-oaks-christian-high","tag-prep-talk","tag-son","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430073","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=430073"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430073\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/430074"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=430073"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=430073"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=430073"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}