It’s boring, but Ventura seems to have mastered The Big Yawn

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Most impressive about Ventura’s 18-1 start to the girls’ basketball season is that the Cougars lost all five starters from last season, including 6-foot-5 Kali Bennett. Four graduated, and Chanelle Thompson-Brennan moved to live with her father a week before the season began. Talk about scrambling. Thompson-Brennan, by the way, is averaging 24.4 points for Dayton (Nev.), which has a 10-1 record.

That’s about four players’ worth of scoring for Ventura, whose leading scorer, Nicole Frank, is averaging 8.4 and no one else is averaging more than 6.2.

‘It’s an odd group,’ said Coach Ann Larson. ‘They’re as odd as their stats look. The dynamics of this team is just amazing. Three sophomores, one junior, seven seniors. I’ve got 11 players and 10 of them play almost an even amount of time.

‘I’m doing our stats and I’m just laughing.’

Ranked 18th by The Times, the Cougars are averaging only 50.6 points a game. They have scored fewer than 40 points as many times (three) as they have scored more than 60. They’re allowing 32.4, on average, and have not allowed more than 46 points to any opponent.

‘I think we’re playing as good a defense as anybody,’ Larson said. ‘No fancy traps, just good man-to-man defense. We give up 35 and I’m happy to score 40. It’s pretty boring, actually. We run 25 seconds off the clock, get a layup or 15 footer. No one’s selling tickets to watch Showtime basketball.’

The strength of Ventura’s schedule is on the back end. It plays Vista Murrieta (14-3) on Saturday at the Ayala Extravaganza, and follows with Saturday games against No. 15 Cajon (Jan. 26) and No. 14 Marlborough (Feb. 2).

-- Martin Henderson

-- Image from www.gothamcityinsider.com