Girls’ basketball: Clearing out the notebook on 2007-08

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I guess I’ll clear out the notebook in conjunction with The Times’ All-Star teams for boy’ and girls’ basketball, as well as the final rankings. In case you couldn’t guess beforehand, Jasmine Dixon is the player of the year.

Plenty of terrific players didn’t make the all-star team. You could do pretty well with a squad that includes the likes of April Cook of Long Beach Poly, Kristen McCarthy of Bishop Amat, Kristen Riley of San Clemente, Megan Richardson of Mira Costa, Amanda Sims of Troy, Cherrish Wallace of Muir, Monica DeAngelis of Windward, Megan Ford of Hart and a number of others.

DeAngelis shot 48% from the three-point line and finished her career with 424 three-pointers, 13 shy of the state record.

Rebekah Gardner of Ayala finished her career with 2,772 points in 129 games, by my count. That means she averaged 21.5 points over her career. For the record, she averaged 16.8 as a freshman, 26.8 as a sophomore, 22.3 as a junior, 19.7 as a senior.

Layshia Clarendon’s first name is pronounced LAY-zhuh. Atonye Nyingifa’s last name is pronounced YING-iff-uh.

Ventura got hosed when it came time to pick the at-large teams for the State Division I playoffs. When I talked to a couple of playoff coaches two days before the selection, we were in agreement that Ventura in Division I-AA should have been the first choice for one of the two at-large berths, and the final berth would be between Lynwood (Div. I-AA) and San Clemente (Div. I-A). It turned out that the actual order of selection was: Lynwood, San Clemente, Perris (II-A), Ventura.

Working against Ventura were a one-point loss to Perris and a two-point loss to Cajon in head-to-head competition. The problem with head-to-head competition is it doesn’t factor a team’s improvement over the course of the season. This is a team that won at Brea Olinda in the quarterfinals and very nearly beat Millikan in a game in which it was outscored from the free-throw line, 20-8.

Reiko Thomas of Narbonne took too much responsibility for her team’s overtime loss to Long Beach Poly in the Southern California Regionals. She made a couple of mistakes. Her teammates weren’t exactly perfect.

The way officials have called fouls against San Jose Mitty’s opponents in the Division II state finals the past years (Brea in 2007, Mira Costa in 2008), I’m inclined to believe that Coach Sue Phillips must be a hypnotist or have incriminating pictures or something.

You want to know how good Long Beach Poly is? The last time the Jackrabbits played these ranked opponents, they beat Millikan by 33, Miller by 29, San Clemente by 16, Lynwood by 25, JSerra by 17 and Redondo by 14. In that game against Lynwood, Poly led by 34 after three quarter before taking out the starting lineup.

It’s hard to vote against Poly for No. 1 at the beginning of next season, but the Jackrabbits won’t have Dixon. Of course, there’s no telling who will move into the area, but they have to come back to the pack, don’t they? if I had to pick a non-Poly team to be No. 1, I’d lean toward Brea because it should be more well-balanced than Cajon.

You want to know who else should be really good next year? Foothill, Perris, Edison, Mater Dei, Summit and Etiwanda.

Talk about rebuilding, Narbonne and L.A. Washington lose nine seniors and Redondo and Miller lose eight.

Some of the biggest surprises of the year, in a good way, were Ventura, Washington and Corona Santiago.

Troy lost T.J. Goddard before the season and still did a heck of a job under first-year Coach Roger Anderson.

Summit needs to follow the lead of Cajon and bump up its schedule next season.

Muir’s schedule down the stretch hurt it once it reached the playoffs. The Mustangs had only one game against a so-called quality opponent after Jan. 5. That’s mostly because they are in an eight-team league, which means they can play one fewer tournament than those in six-team leagues. In the playoffs, Muir lost to Mira Costa by five and Magnolia by one. Both those teams went to the state finals in their divisions.

-- Martin Henderson

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