{"id":179104,"date":"2026-02-15T14:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/179104\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T14:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T14:47:08","slug":"prep-talk-derrick-taylor-continues-his-coaching-magic-at-blair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/179104\/","title":{"rendered":"Prep talk: Derrick Taylor continues his coaching magic at Blair"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Derrick Taylor won four City Section titles coaching basketball at Taft High. He won a Southern Section 3A title coaching at St. John Bosco and a Division II state championship with the Braves. So when he decided to come out of retirement and coach at Blair this season, you knew something good might happen.<\/p>\n<p>On Friday night, Blair continued its run in the Southern Section Division 4 playoffs by upsetting No. 1-seeded Bonita 79-71. Jaleel Hunter had 14 points and 20 rebounds.<\/p>\n<p>Blair lost its top player, Tim Anderson, who transferred to Pasadena. The team started 0-4. Now the Vikings are 21-9 and playing in the Division 4 quarterfinals on the road against Trabuco Hills on Tuesday.<\/p>\n<p>Taylor <a class=\"link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.latimes.com\/sports\/highschool\/story\/2023-07-26\/taft-basketball-coach-derrick-taylor-wont-return-district-investigation\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">lost his job at Taft in 2023 <\/a>after guiding the Toreadors to an Open Division title. He briefly was going to coach at Gardena Serra, then stepped down for health reasons.<\/p>\n<p>Things quickly have turned around for Blair, but it comes as no surprise to  those who\u2019ve seen what Taylor can do.<\/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":"Derrick Taylor won four City Section titles coaching basketball at Taft High. He won a Southern Section 3A&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":179105,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[85122,4690,85124,85123,4194,48,52,51,47,50,49,8841,1417,6310,7556,14310,30258,85125,61160,85126,68],"class_list":["post-179104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-blair","tag-coach","tag-coaching-magic","tag-derrick-taylor","tag-job","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-playoff","tag-point","tag-prep-talk","tag-rebound","tag-road","tag-southern-section-division","tag-taft-high","tag-top-player","tag-trabuco-hills","tag-tuesday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179104"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179104\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}