Long Beach Poly girls hit the Vindication Trail
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Long Beach Poly hasn’t played a girls basketball game since losing to San Francisco Sacred Heart Cathedral, 74-58, in the championship of the Northwest Nike Invitational on Dec. 8.
The Jackrabbits, ranked No. 1 nationally by several outlets in the preseason, still have the kind of schedule that can allow them to finish the year No. 1 in the nation, which was the preseason goal of Coach Carl Buggs and all-star guard/forward Jasmine Dixon, pictured.
‘Honestly, right now, I’m concerned with the next game,’ Buggs said Tuesday. ‘But from that standpoint, yeah’ we could still be No. 1. ‘But we can only control what we can do.’
The next game is Wednesday when Poly (3-1) opens the Tournament of Champions in Chandler, Ariz., against Washington (D.C.) Woodson with a second-round matchup looming against Radnor (Pa.) Archbishop Carroll or Honolulu (Ha.) Punahou. According to the most recent USA Today rankings, Poly is ranked No. 4 in the nation.
Punahou defeated Harbor City Narbonne, 47-39, last week at a tournament in Hawaii. Narbonne was ranked No. 9 in The Times’ preseason top 25. The four-game tournament concludes Saturday.
‘The rankings don’t matter,’ Buggs said. ‘Honestly, I didn’t feel we were nowhere as good as everybody was saying we were because we hadn’t played any games. When you lose 21 years of senior leadership, you don’t replace that overnight. You don’t just replace that with athletes. When you haven’t had your back against the wall and stepped up, you don’t know if you can do it.’
Poly won’t have another chance this season to match up against Sacred Heart, last year’s State Division III champion.
‘I’m not disappointed we won’t play them again, I’m disappointed at the way we lost the game,’ Buggs said.
Dixon and Monique Oliver got in foul trouble with four minutes left in the third quarter -- and Poly holding a nine-point lead over Sacred Heart Cathedral -- but no one stepped up. Absent the inside game, the Jackrabbits didn’t get the perimeter scoring to compensate.
‘With the schedule we have,’ Bugg said, ‘you can’t have a bad shooting night.’
-- Martin Henderson
-- Image by Glenn Koenig/Los Angeles Times