Anaheim Girls Won’t Fail to Advance : Basketball: Despite an 0-9 league record, Colonists will take advantage of new rule and enter postseason play. Experience is the object.

This has been another winter of discontent for the girls’ basketball team at Anaheim High School.

With one game remaining in the Orange League, the Colonists are again in the cellar with an 0-9 record and a league losing streak of 23 games. They’ve won one of 14 games overall this season, a 43-36 victory over Connelly on Dec. 4. In fact, since the 1985-86 season, Anaheim has won one league game--over Magnolia, 37-33, in January, 1989--and four out of 103 games overall.

But even with all that failure, the Anaheim girls won’t be packing it in after their league finale Thursday at Magnolia:

They’re going to the playoffs.

Because of a Southern Section policy enacted this season, any team that wishes to participate in the playoffs will be allowed to do so regardless of where it finishes in league standings.

The teams that take fourth place or below in a league will have to play in a single qualifying round Feb. 13, with the survivors advancing to their respective divisional playoffs three days later.

The section said it decided to fill the 16- and 32-team playoff brackets by having teams determine their fate on the court instead of having it determined for them by a committee.

For a team such as Anaheim, which habitually dwells in the basement of the Orange League, the rule is a godsend. The Colonists cannot realistically compete with perennial powerhouse Brea-Olinda and the other schools in the league, so an open playoff system is their only ticket to the postseason.

And though critics argue that the format taints the competition by rewarding undeserving teams, Anaheim Coach Samuel Lias said he welcomes the opportunity.

“It can’t hurt you. It can only help you with gaining exposure, not only the girls but also me being a first-year coach,” Lias said.

“I do have a young team and this could help us grow for the future. . . . We might go out and get beat by 40 or 50 points, but we are going to go out and give them (opponents) a game.”

Anaheim has tasted often from that bitter well this season. Among their league defeats were an 89-16 thrashing at the hands of Brea-Olinda and a 77-23 pounding by Savanna. The Colonists also lost in the preseason to Villa Park, 64-23.

However, those blowouts won’t deter Lias from taking his team to the playoffs. He said Anaheim has difficulty attracting a nucleus of top-notch players because it must share the available talent with other schools in the area. For the Colonists, it’s an all-inclusive system or a spot on the bleachers to watch the other teams play.

Anaheim, however, is not the only hapless team taking advantage of the new rule. Laguna Beach, the fifth-place team in the Pacific Coast League at 2-7 and a loser this season to Costa Mesa, 73-7, and to Estancia, 75-24, will participate. And so will Century, last in the PCL with an 0-9 mark.

As in Anaheim’s case, Laguna Beach girls’ Athletic Director Joe Pistoia also cited the growth factor.

“We decided this would be a good opportunity to get a little more experience,” Pistoia said.

But should schools such as Anaheim, Laguna Beach and Century, among others, be allowed to enter the playoffs despite their dismal records? Not according to La Habra Coach John Koehler.

“You wonder what you play the league for,” said Koehler, who has built one of the most successful programs in the county. “It takes away some of the incentives. It waters down the competition. I’d rather have good teams in there. It seems to me all the teams that want to go in should have at least a .500 record.”

Westminster is one of those teams nowhere near a break-even mark. The Lions are 3-18 and 0-11 in the Sunset League, their fourth consecutive winless league season. But Westminster girls’ Athletic Director Joe McGuckin said the Lions are among 60 section teams that will not ride into the playoffs on the wings of the new policy.

“I don’t think it behooves us to go out and embarrass ourselves,” McGuckin said. “If we had a chance to establish ourselves and be good representatives of the Sunset League, I would agree to send the team. But it serves us no purpose to humiliate any of our players.

“I just don’t think it’s worth what it would cost the girls in self-esteem. We are going to be good eventually.”

Anaheim’s Lias, however, doesn’t want to wait that long.

“I’d like to play even though I know my team is not at the point to be competitive like I’d like it to be,” he said.