Record-Setting Point Loma Stands Alone : Pointers’ Toughest Challenges Have Come Against Themselves

While NBA players fight the stigma of their games being decided in the final two minutes, Point Loma High School girls’ basketball players readily admit their games are decided in the first two minutes.

“I’d say that by about three minutes into the game,” said junior guard Liza Carrillo, “I usually know we have it.”

On many occasions, the Pointers and their opponents seem to know the outcome before the center jump.

“Before the game,” Carrillo said, “players on the other team will joke and say don’t kill us or don’t beat us by too much.”

Some joke.

Point Loma (5-0) has defeated Torrey Pines, 92-7; Clairemont, 104-29; Fallbrook, 88-25; Crawford, 99-12; and Poway, 76-25 this season to keep extend its winning streak to 62.

The Pointers, coming off 29-0 and 28-0 seasons, have the longest winning streak in the history of San Diego County boys’ or girls’ high school basketball.

Point Loma won the San Diego Section 2-A championship and State Division II title in 1983-1984 and the San Diego Section 3-A title and State Division I title last season.

Point Loma has become so much better than its opponents that its practices are more competitive than its games.

“When all of us are into it, practices are tougher,” forward Terri Mann said. “Some teams we play against can’t even make layups. We look at them warm up and say this will be another win.”

It is almost difficult for Mann to fathom a player not being able to make a layup. After all, she sinks turnaround jumpers from the corners while being triple-teamed and makes twisting reverse layups in traffic.

Playing with a sprained left ankle that was taped, Mann, a 6-foot 2-inch junior, had a career-high 44 points and 30 rebounds against Fallbrook. Last year, she averaged 25.3 points and set a Section season rebounding record with 538.

It may come as no surprise that Mann looks forward to the challenge of playing pickup games against men at the Ocean Beach recreation center and at Municipal Gym in Balboa Park.

“I like playing against men more,” Mann said. “That’s the only way you get better. Some guys give me a hard time. They say I should be at home cooking, and I tell them they should be working and earning money.”

Without boasting, Mann says that Tina Hutchinson, a former San Diego State All-America, is the only woman she has played against who is as good as she is.

“We played against each other this past summer,” Mann said, “and it was fun. She can out-jump me. We were stopping each other’s shots. I blocked her shot twice and was all happy.”

Keeping Mann and her talented teammates motivated and making the games and practices interesting is a challenge for Coach Lee Trepanier.

“It is hard when your team is that much better than other teams,” Trepanier said. “Sometimes during a one-sided game, I will tell the players to work on their outside shooting. No shot goes inside. We work on defense. Specifically, we’ll try not to allow passes to the wing. Also, I might say to Terri, ‘How many rebounds can you get,’ and I’ll ask Chanelle (McCoy) how many assists she can get.”

During his team’s first two games this season, Trepanier played his seniors as one unit and his underclassmen as another. It wasn’t until the game against Fallbrook that he played his starting team together.

“No doubt that my second group is not a bad group,” Trepanier said.

How has this former engineer who loves teaching math and working with kids built a powerhouse at Point Loma?

Four starters graduated from his 1983-84 championship team and the ‘84-85 team--made up of all underclassmen--went undefeated. So much for a transition.

Starting center Jessica Benton’s family moved from Sacramento to Point Loma. Suddenly, the Pointers had a 6-4 player to replace graduating center Suzanne Eagye, the 1984 San Diego Section Player of the Year. Starting point guard Chanelle McCoy transferred from Lincoln High to Point Loma.

“Sure, there is some luck,” Trepanier said. “But basically, my team is better because they’ve worked. We are year-round players, and when you are year-round players, you get better.”

Since coming to Point Loma, the longest Mann has gone without shooting a basketball is a week. That was when the Ocean Beach recreation center was closed last summer.

Trepanier said all his players attended at least three basketball camps last summer. Five of his players went to the prestigious Blue Star camp at Cal Poly Pamona. Actually, the traveling Pointers have more than 62 consecutive victories, counting their summer performances.

Point Loma won six straight games to capture a 16-team tournament in South Lake Tahoe last summer. They averaged 60 points and gave up 12 per game.

Summer tournaments are followed by fall pickup games which are followed by winter practices.

Ah, practices.

“He’s (Trepanier) really a nice guy,” Carrillo said, “but when we get on the court during practices, he’s a whole different guy. He can get really mean during practice. Then after he gets off the court, he forgets what he says and we’re supposed to forget what he says. A lot of times you can forget because we’re used to it. Sometimes it’s hard to forget.”

Some opposing coaches find it difficult to forget or forgive 70- or 80-point losses to Point Loma.

Earlier this season, the Pointers led Torrey Pines, 50-1, at halftime.

“Some people don’t like Coach T because they say he’s mean and he raises the score too high,” Mann said. “That’s not his fault. The first or second team scores automatically.”

Trepanier substitutes liberally, but he refuses to change the game plan because of the score.

“I don’t believe in doing something in games that we don’t do in practice,” Trepanier said.

His teams do not play zone defense and he will not tell his players to hold onto the ball and not try to score.

What Trepanier will do is warn his players that losing is always a possibility.

“Some of us are cocky,” Carrillo said, “but Coach T tells us what may happen if we slack off.”

Entering this weekend’s Tournament of Champions at UC Santa Barbara, the Pointers face a rarity. They are not the top-seeded team in a tournament. Christ the King High School of New York is seeded first and Point Loma second. USA Today’s poll of the top 25 teams in the country places Christ the King first and Point Loma second.

“I think about what it would be like to lose, but I don’t know what I’d do,” said Mann, who has yet to lose a game in her three years at Point Loma.

Mann remembers the one close call the Pointers did have.

“We were behind a couple of points late in the game against Wilson (of San Francisco) in the state championship game last year,” Mann said. “We looked at each other and said, ‘That’s not us playing out there.’ It was scary.”

Mann had 32 points, 17 rebounds, 6 blocked shots and 3 steals to lead the Pointers to a 53-48 victory.

“When we get stuck and can’t run a play,” Carrillo said, “the ball just goes to Terri. If a team could guard or stop Terri, they could beat us. . . . I know a lot of people are dying for us to lose. Especially the boys’ varsity team.”

That’s probably understandable since Mann, Carrillo, McCoy, Benton, Michelle Collumn and their teammates are the most talked about basketball team on the Point Loma campus.

“People around school never ask if we win,” Carrillo said. “They ask how many points we won by?”

The answers are 85, 75, 63, 87 and 51.