Orange County Championships can bring out the best

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The Larry Doyle Orange County Championships for girls’ basketball tipped off this morning and will continue through its conclusion on Saturday when the championship is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. Games begin daily at 9:30 a.m.

There’s a rundown of the tournament here. And though it’s the OC Championships, there have been some notable outsiders. Norco was last year’s winner, if I recall correctly, and in at least one game it came from eight or nine points down in the final minute to beat San Clemente. The point being, it can be a pretty entertaining tournament that brings out the best in teams. Hart also had a couple of pretty good runs at the tournament while Ashlee Trebilcock played for the Indians.

The best game of the first round pits No. 21 Esperanza vs. Riverside North at 6:30 p.m. North will likely move into The Times’ Top 25 when its preseason ranking gets updated after the holiday tournaments.

The first two days of the tournament are at Edison, third and fourth days are at Marina.

Edison Coach Corey Kelly told The Huntington Beach Independent that this year’s tournament is the strongest ever. Perhaps. But for my money, none of the tournaments have yet exceeded the first year, when something like seven of the top 10 teams in Orange County participated, and the eighth team was Laguna Hills, which provided one of the tournament’s most memorable games ever when it took El Toro to overtime before finally losing. That was when ET had Giuliana Mendiola as a sophomore or junior. The whole tournament just kept building and building.

With teams such as No. 3 San Clemente, No. 6 Santa Margarita, No. 12 Mira Costa, No. 16 Troy and No. 22 Foothill participating, there’s plenty of depth there.

-- Martin Henderson