We've taken to calling this upcoming Friday and Saturday the Hell Weekend around the sports desk at The Californian. To wit: The Central Section boys and girls basketball championships will be contested those days in Fresno, the March Meet drag-racing extravaganza at Famoso Speedway (actually lasts through Sunday) and, oh yeah, a few thousand in town for the CIF State Wrestling Championships at Rabobank Arena.

Normally, the basketball and wrestling are on the same weekend; that's always been a scheduling issue and probably always will be. But usually, those fall on the first weekend in March. Because this March 1 was a Sunday, they got pushed back to the 6-7, and March Meet, usually on the second weekend, took the 6-7 as the second weekend. What's a sports fan to do?

I'm going to have fun. It'll be lots of work, but it'll be fun. And it already started last week, with both the Central Section Grand Masters meet at East High (which I went crazy blogging here and here) and the start of the boys and girls basketball playoffs.

The girls play semifinals Tuesday, and there haven't been any big surprises there. Clovis West and Stockdale, the two big favorites in Division I, will play home games against Bakersfield and Fresno-Edison, respectively, and frankly, a lot of folks will be stunned if it's not the Golden Eagles and Mustangs in the championship. Same with Hanford in D-II, and since Garces has lost just once, you've got to throw the Rams in that group, too, though they've got a tough game with Sanger in the semifinals. The lower divisions are more or less following chalk, too.

Not so in boys basketball, where the shocker of the year happened the day I wrote a column talking about the power of underdogs this year. That would be this Division I quarterfinal score: No. 9 Clovis Buchanan 70, No. 1 Clovis East 69. The Timberwolves had proven again and again that they were the class of the section this season — undefeated within the Valley with at least one game against most of the other contenders for Best Team. But Buchanan was having none of it, and won the game on a last-second shot by Jackson Carbajal.

The real effect of that, besides breaking Clovis East hearts, is that a Division I title is completely up for grabs. Centennial and Central both won close games at home in the bottom half of the bracket, and the winner of their game at Central on Wednesday will be the higher seed in the final at Selland Arena on Saturday night. Buchanan, obviously, has proven itself worthy of title consideration. But I think the real favorite might be Edison, which won at Clovis West in a dynamite quarterfinal and now doesn't have Clovis East staring at it in the semi. And remember, this isn't like other sports where the higher seed gets a huge advantage. All championships are at Selland.

In Division II, which was the deeper bracket going in, the top four seeds have made it through to the semifinals, where Sunnyside at Liberty and Garces at Lemoore should be loads of fun. Ridgeview is the top seed in Division III and gets El Diamante next, while Bakersfield Christian is now the prohibitive favorite in D-IV; the Eagles were a lock for the No. 1 seed and now have seen No. 2 Fowler and No. 4 Pariler go out in the first two rounds.

On to the other big high school event of the week — the state wrestling tournament. This is where I'll be spending a lot of my time for the next few days (though I'm going to try to make it out to a couple of hoops semifinals). We'll get into more detail with some of these kids later, but for now, here's a list of Kern County's 26 state qualifiers along with their weight class and what place they took at Masters.

Bryce Hammond, Bakersfield, 1st at 152
Jonah Cruz, Bakersfield, 2nd at 140
Adam Fierro, Bakersfield, 2nd at 145
Brian Schoene, Bakersfield, 2nd at 215
Timmy Box, Bakersfield, 3rd at 130
Jose Ramirez, Bakersfield, 3rd at 160
Natrelle Demison, Bakersfield, 4th at 112

Seth Hicks, Centennial, 1st at 135

Rene Medina, Shafter, 1st at 171

Greg Kapler, Liberty, 2nd at 135
Martin Cueto, Liberty, 4th at 145

Angel Posadas, Foothill, 3rd at heavyweight
Derik Rizo, Foothill, 7th at 130

Javier Sanchez, Ridgeview, 4th at 140

Noel Gomez, Ceasar Chavez, 4th at 215

Shane Ellis, Frontier, 5th at 189
Lance Castenada, Frontier, 6th at 145

Amandeep Singh, Delano, 5th at 160

Antonio Hernandez, East, 6th at heavyweight
Marc Collier, East, 7th at 112
Peter Gonzalez, East, 7th at 119

Michael Martinez, Wasco, 6th at 140

James St. John, Tehachapi, 7th at 160
Jared Steinbach, Tehachapi, 8th at 125

Michael Machado, Arvin, 7th at 189
Francisco Bugambilia, Arvin, 8th at 140