HS boys basketball: McClatchy-DCA decides Metro League; Burbank coach wins 600th
Nine years ago, Lindsey Ferrell explained his coaching expectations of his players. They had to be tough, proud, and prepared. Or they sit.
And this: “I’m not easy to play for,” Ferrell said then in a Sacramento Bee profile. He has not changed a bit over the decades in his role at Burbank High School, the pride of South Sacramento. He remains the bespectacled, fierce and fun-to-watch leader known for coaching his players hard and then loving them up just the same with words of encouragement or a hug.
Ferrell is the very definition of what a Burbank Titan represents: A ferocious competitor who will wring out every drop of effort from his student-athletes. Alums proudly refer to Burbank by location, as in “3500 Florin Road,” where the campus rests in the heart of the Sacramento Unified School District.
John Copeland came up with the “3500 Florin Road” tag when he coached the Titans girls basketball teams in the early 1980s and then the boys from the mid-1980s and into the 1990s. A polarizing and revered figure on campus in that era, Copeland was the one who convinced a young Ferrell to coach the girls Titans, and he has remained a friend and backer of Ferrell from his home in Florida.
Last week, Ferrell won his 600th career game as a Titan, including 13 seasons as a championship girls coach at the school and the last 20 as boys coach, a run that includes 19 playoff teams, including the current edition. Burbank plays at West Campus on Tuesday night to decide the Greater Sacramento League championship, and the Titans will bound into next week’s CIF Sac-Joaquin Section Division III playoffs as one tough customer led by one tough coach.
Ferrell’s victory total now sits at 601, which far and away makes him the winningest basketball coach in the history of the Sac City Unified, girls or guys. He has more wins than Harvey Tahara, who coached the boys, and later the girls, at McClatchy from the late 1970s through 2011.
He has more wins than what Spider Thomas spun together as boys coach at Kennedy in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Ferrell has more victories than John Langston, who has piled up girls victories at Sacramento High and at West Campus for more than 25 years, and counting.
Said Ferrell in 2017 to The Bee, “To play for me, to deal with me, you need to be mentally tough, because I’m going to push players to be better than they think they area. I tell them they need to be a ‘Lindsey Guy.’ Be tough, be proud, be able to put up with me pushing you, and it’s got to be done my way. You have to earn it.”
Asked about that quote on Tuesday morning, Ferrell laughed and said, “Yeah, yeah! That still stands. Kids are kids. You still have to push them. They all want to play, and at end of day, they need direction. They want to be coached. I got in this to work with kids, to help them, to push them. And playing hard, that’s the way I was taught to play. For me, you’ve got to play hard, or just sit down over here on the bench.”
The outpouring of support when he won his 600th, a victory over Fairfield on Feb. 3, moved Ferrell. He beamed at the sight of balloons, some in the form of “600,” and he always beams when his wife of more than 20 years, Zena, embraces him. She used to coach with him when they coached the Titans girls basketball teams. Zena sits behind the coach for boys games.
Ferrell said the wives of coaches are the unsung heroes in this line of work. Without support, coaches cannot expect to sustain 33 years on the bench like Ferrell has.
“Have to have that support, have to have someone who has your back, or it won’t work,” Ferrell said. “I’ve spent half my life in this gym here on 3500 Florin Road. I owe so much to John Copeland for giving me that opportunity and to my wife Zena for putting up with me.”
Ferrell to coach one more season
Ferrell said he will coach at least one more season. But it won’t be easy to bow out. This has become such a big part of his life, and saying goodbye is no simple task.
The Titans are led in scoring by senior guard Josiah Haliburton at 19.5 points a game and in scoring by another senior in Korshawn Sanders-Thomas at 6.8 boards per night. There are several sophomores who have impressed the old coach. They include guards Brandon Osby, TJ Tagger, Johnnie Williams and DeAnthony Williams. Osby is the son of Russell Osby, a star guard for the Kennedy Cougars in the early 1990s.
Ferrell’s top assistant coach Da’rell Gordon is the heir apparent to take over the Titans. Gordon played on Ferrell’s first Titans boys team of 2007, leading that playoff team in assists.
“He came around a couple of times, wanting to coach with me, and I told him, ‘You’re not ready,’” Ferrell said. “He coached at a couple of places but said he wanted to come back home. He was persistent about it. I saw some of him in me — a gym rat. Then I told him he was ready.”
Coach Gordon was ready because he was, to the core, a “Lindsey Guy.”
Twelve Bridges stuns Placer
The Foothill Valley League has been every bit as good as advertised, including thrillers to the wire.
Last Friday, Twelve Bridges of Lincoln defeated Placer 57-56 in Auburn to knot up the top of the FVL standings. Twelve Bridges and Placer are tied for first place in the FVL at 8-2, a half-game ahead of Roseville, with two games before the playoffs start next week.
Placer and Twelve Bridges are in the Division III race, so a rematch may be in order in the postseason. Carl Toelle’s late 3-pointer for the Raging Rhinos delivered the dramatic victory for coach Robert Ash. Safi Abdela and Micah Bowman each scored 20 for Twelve Bridges, which withstood the 24 points of Placer’s Kannon Rector.
DCA-McClatchy to decide Metro title
The Metro League championship expects to come down to Friday night on Freeport Boulevard as Bee No. 6-ranked McClatchy hosts No. 5 Destiny Christian Academy of Sacramento in a battle of two teams with Lions as their mascot.
DCA beat McClatchy 58-56 on Jan. 23. DCA and coach Rich Sondhi are a misleading 19-7 on the season with six of the losses to out-of-area or out-of-state teams. The lone local loss came against Sheldon on Dec. 30 in a Southern California tournament. The DCA Lions are 10-0 in the Metro League and are led by senior captains Frederick Blue III, Mohamed Kamara and Myles Wiggins.
McClatchy under coach Tony Vaughn is 21-4, the program’s best start since the early 1990s under famed coach Harvey Tahara, whose name graces the McClatchy gym floor. These Lions are led by guards Jordan Boyce, Kai Bradford and Noah Hargrove and forwards PJ Parker and Ezra Rielly.
McClatchy has wins over Bee-ranked teams Natomas, Woodcreek, Antelope (twice), Vanden and Grant. McClatchy hosts Grant on Wednesday night as home games have been a fun and frenzied atmosphere.
CIF Section bracket show
The Bee’s Joe Davidson will join the Sac-Joaquin Section’s bracket-release selection show, 1:30 p.m. Saturday, which will be a free livestreamed event on the NFHS Network.
The playoff for Divisions I-VI start Feb. 17 at home sites. The section finals are Feb. 27-28 at Golden 1 Center, home of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings.
The Bee’s Top 20
(Records entering Tuesday)
1. Folsom (21-5)
2. Sheldon (23-4)
3. Franklin (23-3)
4. Sacramento (18-8)
5. Destiny Christian (19-7)
6. McClatchy (21-4)
7. Woodcreek (20-7)
8. Inderkum (19-7)
9. Placer (23-3)
10. Jesuit (17-8)
11. Vanden (20-6)
12. Antelope (20-6)
13. Casa Roble (22-4)
14. Natomas (17-9)
15. Monterey Trail (13-13)
16. Grant (15-9)
17. Twelve Bridges (22-4)
18. Christian Brothers (15-12)
19. Oakmont (25-1)
20. Whitney (18-8)
Bubble: Oak Ridge (15-11); Rio Americano (15-9); Colfax (21-5); Granite Bay (11-15); Rocklin (12-14); Marysville (20-6); Elk Grove (14-12); Roseville (14-13); Sutter (21-6); Burbank (16-10); West Campus (19-6); Nevada Union (15-12).
This story was originally published February 10, 2026 at 1:03 PM.