L.A. City Updates: Arenas Sets Mark

This week, the state career scoring record fell. Last week, the CIF L.A. City Section career record was surpassed by a player who probably would have surpassed this week’s total next season if not for a reclassification.

TO SEE UPDATED ALL-TIME STATE CAREER SCORING LIST AFTER THIS WEEK’S GAMES (GOLD CLUB), CLICK HERE.

FOR WRITEUP ON NEW STATE CAREER SCORING RECORD, CLICK HERE.

While Tounde Yessoufou gets plenty of attention for breaking the state’s all-time scoring mark held for 21 years with Jason Crowe Jr. on the horizon, we want to also mention that Alijah Arenas of Chatsworth recently hit some significant milestones. Had Arenas decided to stay in the 2026 class, he too might be surpassing Yessoufou’s mark, but since he’s doing only three years of high school he will likely settle for joining the state’s 3,000-point club.

Alijah Arenas makes a move for Chatsworth during 2024 CIF D4 state championship game. Photo: Willie Eashman.

Arenas committed to USC last Thursday and six days earlier, the 6-foot-6 shooting guard broke the all-time L.A. City Section scoring mark early in the Chancellors’ 76-74 overtime loss to Cleveland of Reseda of 2,540 points set by three-time all-L.A. City choice and 1998 all-state standout Deon “Popeye” Green of Los Angeles High School. Green, who went on to to play at South Florida, averaged 18 ppg as a freshman in 1994-95 and improved his marks each season, topping out by scoring 762 points in 27 games (28.2 ppg) the season he made the elite all-state team. While DeMarcus Nelson held the state mark for 21 years, Green held the L.A. City mark for 27 years.

After scoring a single-season section record 1,154 points as a sophomore last year, we had a good idea Arenas was going to be the L.A. City’s Section’s scoring king, so we dug a bit deeper for players who were high scorers that played on good teams or starred on the varsity as freshmen. We uncovered some interesting notes about the section’s stars of the past.

Green’s mark meets the cut off for the Cal-Hi Sports Record Book online listings, as he accumulated his total in 105 games. One more player who makes the 2,300-point cutoff mark is Danny Walker, who played at L.A. Westchester (1993-95) & L.A. Fremont (1996) and went on to play at USC and Nebraska. Walker, like Green, averaged 18 ppg as a freshman on a talented Westchester team that made the 1993 L.A. City Section 4A semifinals. The 1993 State Freshman of the Year played on much stronger teams than Green, so his average didn’t go up much until he went for 24 ppg as a senior at Fremont, but he also played in more games. Walker finished with 2,354 points in 119 games, with the point total making our online state record book.

Arenas had 1,971 points in two seasons and the third section player on the list who we found with over 2,000 career points who he surpassed this season happens to be his father Gilbert Arenas of Van Nuys Grant, who prepped there between 1997-1999. He had a better sophomore season than we recall for the 7-15 Lancers (22.5 ppg), then he really turned it up in his junior (787 points) and senior season (841 points), averaging 32.3 ppg in 1998-99 to finish with 2,124 career points. Dad actually scored more points as a senior than his son did as a freshman in 2023 when he led the Chancellors to the CIF D4 state title game.

Even though Gilbert Arenas’ overall point total doesn’t meet our state cutoff, he made his mark in 74 career games, which averages out to 28.7 ppg, which is the section’s all-time high mark for players with a reported 1,500 or more career points. He broke the old mark of 28.3 ppg set by Darren Daye (1977-79), the MVP of the 1979 McDonald’s All-American Game out of Granada Hills Kennedy who scored 1,783 points in 63 career games.

There are players who are near or even above Gilbert Arenas in career scoring, but didn’t play in as many games or competed during a time when the L.A. City Section had much shorter seasons. We are still doing more research, but there may be only a few above or near 2,000 career points. It’s quite an accomplishment for Alijah Arenas (and Green before him) considering the individual talent and great teams that have come through the section. If case you’re wondering about players such as Marques Johnson, John Williams, Chris Mills, and a host of other All-Americans from city schools, they didn’t play in enough overall games or played on teams too strong to reach those individual marks. Most L.A. City Schools didn’t have ninth grade until the mid-1980s and the great Crenshaw and Westchester teams were defined by depth and defensive pressure, not individual high scoring marks, and rarely had sophomores with big numbers.

We still doing more research on four-year standouts such as Dwyane Polee Sr. (L.A. Manual Arts) and Mark Bradford (L.A. Fremont), but we’re pretty confident Alijah Arenas stands alone. Including Friday’s senior night victory over Granada Hills in which he scored 25 points, the Chatsworth star now has 2,614 points with five regular season games and the playoffs still to come.


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