A look at three of this week\u2019s top high school football games in the Southland:<\/p>\n
FRIDAY<\/p>\n
Mater Dei (3-2) vs. Santa Margarita (4-1) at Saddleback College, 7 p.m. <\/p>\n
You might think you\u2019re watching a f\u00fatbol game instead of a football game in this Trinity League opener in which both teams have outstanding defenses, which means any scoring will be a luxury. Santa Margarita has three shutouts in five games. Mater Dei has a terrific group of linebackers. The pick: Santa Margarita.<\/p>\n
Sherman Oaks Notre Dame (5-0) at Chaminade (5-0), 7 p.m. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s the battle of the unbeatens in a Mission League opener. Notre Dame has not faced a team this season the caliber of Chaminade, which can run, pass and play good defense. Notre Dame needs a big game from the versatile Tahj Skinner, its quarterback and star safety. The pick: Chaminade.<\/p>\n
Cleveland (5-0) at Birmingham (1-4), 7 p.m. <\/p>\n
Who thought Birmingham would be the underdog in any West Valley League game? The Patriots won only once during their nonleague schedule against Southern Section teams and took a setback last week in a loss to Harvard-Westlake. Cleveland used its rushing attack to upset Crenshaw on the road. The winner will be a certain City Section Open Division playoff team. The pick: Birmingham.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A look at three of this week\u2019s top high school football games in the Southland: FRIDAY Mater Dei…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[13507,5836,188444,188439,188442,188441,80017,48,52,51,10572,47,50,49,63,188440,224,21270,5141,188443,430],"class_list":["post-480456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-cleveland","tag-crenshaw","tag-foothill-league-matchup","tag-friday-hart","tag-hart-quarterback-camren-ketner","tag-hart-run","tag-improvement","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-league","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-los-angeles-times","tag-matix-frithsmith","tag-p-m","tag-pick","tag-saugus","tag-strong-program","tag-week"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480456","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=480456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}