California High School Boys Basketball Player of the Week: How Voting Works & How to Win

The geography of this ballot: Plumas County to Orange County on one list

Start with the March 4, 2025 ballot and read the schools, not the names. Dalton Bentz and Owen Joseph played for Plumas Charter — a small independent school in the Sierra Nevada foothills where the county seat has fewer than 2,000 residents. Magnus Berg and Connor Sheridan played for Portola in Irvine, a CIF-SS program inside Orange County's tech corridor. Fernando Lopez came from Point Arena, a school of roughly 100 students on the Mendocino coast. Andrew Lim and Justin Wang came from Basis Independent Silicon Valley, a private school in San Jose with an internationally sourced student body and parent networks that extend across multiple campuses and grade levels.

That span is the structural fact. The statewide scope puts three distinct climate zones, five CIF sections, and enrollment ranges from 80 to 4,000 onto a single week's ballot.

The community mobilization mechanics differ at every point on that map. Plumas Charter is centralized — geographically close, socially dense, reachable through a handful of direct connections. Portola in Irvine sits inside a highly networked suburban community where families circulate information through club sports, HOA channels, and school apps. Basis Independent draws from a diaspora of families spread across the South Bay who share information in ways that cross campuses and grade levels simultaneously. A campaign that works for one of those schools will structurally underperform for the others.

Connor Sheridan, 24 candidates, and what a large field changes

Twenty-four names. That is the field Connor Sheridan won against on January 29, 2025 — and that number tells you more about how this poll works than any other single data point.

In a 6-name football poll, a runner-up might finish with 25 percent of the vote, and a winner who clears 40 percent has effectively dominated the field. In a 24-name basketball ballot, the math looks completely different: the runner-up might finish with 8 or 9 percent, and a winner can claim a plurality while representing a minority of all votes cast — because the rest of the field fragments into small individual piles while one school's supporters consolidate behind a single name. That is how you win a 24-candidate ballot without a majority. You do not need to beat everyone; you need to be the one school whose fans actually show up while the rest assume someone else will.

Other confirmed 2024-25 winners — Kaleb Smith of Damien (La Verne), Aidan Braccia of Sacred Heart Prep (Atherton), Nikhil Narasimhan of Lynbrook, Orion Tomlinson of Fresno Christian, Karson Seamen of Los Molinos, Justin White of Mission Hills, Cameron Saldaña of Aptos — spread across CIF-SS private schools, Bay Area independents, NorCal public programs, and a Central Valley school. No single region dominates the winners list.

That is worth repeating. No single region dominates. Not SoCal. Not the Bay Area. The field is genuinely open.

NorCal in January, statewide by March — and why the label matters

One operational detail separates the California boys basketball poll from the football and softball versions: the geographic scope changes mid-season, and if you miss that shift, you can mobilize a campaign for a ballot your player is not even on.

January polls are branded "Northern California" and draw nominees from NorCal CIF sections — Sac-Joaquin, North Coast, Central Coast, Central, Northern, San Francisco, Oakland. By late February the ballot expands and the title shifts to "California." For a SoCal program, this matters two ways. First, if a Damien or Mission Hills player posts a strong January week, that performance may not appear on a ballot currently scoped to NorCal sections. Second, when the scope expands, NorCal fans who have been voting consistently for NorCal nominees all January will encounter new SoCal entries they have no prior attachment to — which can give a well-organized SoCal community a structural opening in February that it does not have in January.

The Sunday 11:59 p.m. Pacific close holds across both phases. What changes is who is eligible to appear, not when the ballot ends.

Running a campaign when the field has twenty names

A twenty-name ballot rewards reach, not intensity. One household voting repeatedly through Sunday contributes far less than fifty people each voting a handful of times — the math of a large, scattered field means width matters more than depth in your first push.

The California boys basketball community activates through very different network topologies depending on where the school sits. Bay Area private schools like Sacred Heart Prep and Basis Independent circulate through parent email lists and school-app channels where families are accustomed to acting on notifications quickly. NorCal small-school programs like Plumas Charter and Los Molinos run through tightly connected community channels where a single team group chat reaches a meaningful fraction of the whole fan base in minutes. SoCal CIF-SS programs like Portola and Damien carry larger absolute networks spread across club teams, youth leagues, and multiple campuses, which means any single message reaches a subset and must be repeated across those channels to move the needle — a structural difference from the small-school situation that requires more coordination, not more enthusiasm.

Getting onto the ballot comes first. Email athleteoftheweek@scorebooklive.com with stat line, opponent, score, position, and grade, or tag @sbliveca on X or Instagram. Saturday night or early Sunday morning is the practical cutoff. Once the ballot is live, campaigns that remind their network on Saturday and again Sunday morning consistently outperform those that treat Friday as the deadline.

The how-to guide covers how recurring fan-vote polls work across their weekly cadence. For a poll this open and uncapped, structured vote-support exists as a way to add concentrated volume into a field where natural turnout scatters across 20 nominees. If your player competes in a different sport — or if the season falls outside the December-to-March boys basketball window — the California contest directory lists the other High School on SI fan-vote polls active in the state.