STATE HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT REGIONAL FINALE : Division II Girls : Valley Christian Starts Outside and Moves Into Title Game

It was a guess worth taking, according to Coach Eleanor Dykstra, and its success helped her Valley Christian High School girls’ team win the Division II Southern Regional title Saturday at the Sports Arena.

Led all season by the strong inside game of 6-3 center Kari Parriott and 6-2 forward Donna Pollema, Valley Christian raced to a 9-2 lead on the strength of its perimeter shooting and then relied on defense to beat Lompoc, 67-38, for its 24th consecutive win.

The Lady Crusaders (27-2) will meet Red Bluff (28-2), a 58-53 winner over Roseville in the Northern Regional, to decide the state champion next weekend at Oakland.

“I thought Lompoc would try to shut down our inside attack, so we decided to go with our outside shooting more,” Dykstra said about the strategy that kept the Lady Crusaders in command from the opening tipoff. “It was a guess, and I think I guessed right.”

While Valley Christian hit 69% of its field-goal attempts, its defense was responsible for Lompoc hitting only 28% from the field.

Parriott, the Southern Section’s third-leading scorer, finished with 25 points after a sluggish first quarter in which she scored four points and grabbed just one rebound. Pollema finished with 22 points. The senior post players were named to the all-tournament team along with Marie Fontaine and Pam Coffey of Lompoc and Nicole Anderson of La Jolla.

An expected offensive shootout between Parriott and Pollema and the 6-1 Coffey and Fontaine never materialized. After opening with a 2-3 zone, Dykstra switched to a matchup zone in the final three quarters. Fontaine finished with 13 points and Coffey had 12, but in the first half, they combined for just 11 points. Lompoc was averaging 66 points a game.

The Lady Crusaders were challenged just once, when Lompoc pulled to within 19-16 on a basket by Marie Fontaine.

But from that point, Valley Christian, the 1-A Division champion from the Southern Section, outscored the Braves, 12-1, for a 31-17 halftime lead.