Palmisano Breaks Buena’s Spell : Girls’ basketball: Guard helps Thousand Oaks break 15-game losing streak to Bulldogs with win in I-A final.

Talk about having a monkey on your back. Members of the Thousand Oaks High girls’ basketball team must have felt as if the entire jungle was perched on their shoulders Friday when the Lancers lined up against Buena for the Southern Section I-A Division championship.

Six trips to the championship round under Coach Joe Vaughan had established Buena as Ventura County’s powerhouse. The Bulldogs had beaten the Lancers 15 consecutive times and in 16 of 17 meetings.

In fact, in three playoff appearances under Coach Chuck Brown, Thousand Oaks had come up empty-handed against Buena, in 1986, 1988 and 1989. Michelle Palmisano was a freshman on the 1988-89 team and in the quarterfinals failed in her first attempt to help end Buena’s dominance of the Lancers. But given a second chance, the 5-foot-9 junior guard and her mates finally bumped the Bulldogs.

Palmisano had game-highs of 24 points and nine rebounds in leading the Lancers to a 67-57 win over Buena in their first championship-game appearance. Palmisano became Ventura County’s all-time leading scorer with a jump shot in the third quarter that eclipsed the record of 1,927 points set by Nichole Victoria of Camarillo in 1987-90.

“I really start to take it for granted that she’s going to have 25 points, 10 rebounds, and five or six assists,” Brown said. “It’s easy to overlook her.”

Lancer opponents would dispute that. After all, Palmisano has averaged 24.8 points and 10 rebounds in leading Thousand Oaks (28-3 overall before Tuesday’s game) to a school record for wins in a season. Last Tuesday, she scored a game-high 26 points, including the Lancers’ final four points, in a 52-48 win over Cerritos in the semifinals.

Palmisano spins, dribbles behind her back at a full sprint, buries 20-foot jump shots and finds teammates underneath the basket with passes that zip past defenders.

Perhaps her skills never meant as much to her as they did against Buena on Friday. Her sister Teresa led the Bulldogs to the 4-A final in 1987 during a stormy relationship with Buena Coach Joe Vaughan that involved the banishment of Joe Palmisano, the girls’ father, from Buena’s gymnasium.

The dispute between the family and Vaughan reached such proportions that Michelle moved from Ventura before her freshman year to attend Thousand Oaks. The Southern Section office investigated the move amid charges that Michelle still lived in Ventura but she was exonerated.

Although three years have passed, bitter feelings have not. Teresa, now an All-Pacific 10 Conference player at Cal, phoned Michelle on Thursday to offer moral support.

“She’s talked to me so much and given me so much advice,” Michelle said. “She’s my idol. She’s going to be really happy to hear that we won.”

When Michelle first played against Buena, in the 1989 quarterfinals, she failed to reach double figures and Thousand Oaks lost, 59-48. “I was very, very scared and played horrible,” she said. “But I learned from that. This time I just wanted to go out and try my best.”

Even Brown was somewhat antsy. “I talked to her as she was having her ankles taped on Thursday, and told her I knew it would be extremely hard for her to approach the game as just another game,” he said. “But she had to try and do that.”

After the tip-off, the past faded as an issue. Palmisano showed no emotion until the final horn sounded and the jungle was emptied.

“When I’m playing, I’m concentrating on winning,” she said. “I don’t really like to take certain things to heart.”