SPORTS NOTEBOOK : Basketball Shooting Star Sets Her Sights at the Court’s Outer Limits : Basketball: Kristen Ebright of Whitney High is No. 2 among three-point shooters in CIF Southern Section history.

When she was 7, Kristen Ebright shot baskets in the driveway of her Cerritos home. Because of the slope of the driveway, she took up long-range shooting from a flat spot on the sidewalk about 20 feet from the basket.

All that practice has paid off for Ebright. The senior guard for Whitney High School in Cerritos has become the second-most prolific three-point shooter in CIF Southern Section history.

Ebright, who has 161 three-point baskets, trails Culver City High junior Jenny Nakanishi, who had 181 through Monday. Both players have surpassed the 137 total set by Aimee McDaniel of Brea-Olinda from 1986 to ’90.

Ebright made four three-point shots Monday night in a 59-53 victory over Faith Baptist. She has six regular-season games and at least one playoff game remaining. The Wildcats, who play host to Sherman Oaks Buckley at 7 tonight at Artesia High, lead the Delphic League with a 4-0 record and are 13-3 overall.

Ebright’s total is considered astounding because Whitney, a prep school that stresses academics over athletics, does not have a gymnasium or locker room. In the off-season, players play on the campus’ blacktop courts adjacent to Cerritos Park East. The girls’ team practices in the gymnasium at the closed Excelsior High in Norwalk, but it has played its home games at several facilities, including Artesia and Cerritos.

The 5-foot-5 Ebright, a three-year starter, would prefer to drive to the basket.

“I was real skinny when I was smaller, and I would try to drive in and I got hit a lot,” she said. “I didn’t like it. So I figured I could get three points by stepping back and shooting it. That would help us win more.”

Ebright, a first-team All-Southern Section 1-A Division choice, made 73 three-point attempts as a junior, which tied the third-best total in Southern Section history. The Wildcats won the Olympic League title. This season her three-point production is down 40%, but her scoring average has increased from 20 to 24 points a game.

“I’m not looking to shoot it that much more,” she said. “A lot of teams have pretty much figured out that I’m going to shoot it, and they come out to get me. That’s when I like to drive.”

Ebright calls her total “no big deal,” but Whitney Coach Paula Strande has been impressed.

“I will really be sad to see her go,” Strande said. “She is the best basketball player Whitney has ever had.”

As a junior, Ebright had a 4.0 grade-point average. She would like to attend UC Irvine, where she wants to major in environmental engineering. She wants to play basketball in college, but said her “grades come first.”

Bill Simpson, a former Lakewood High baseball standout and the No. 1 draft pick of the Texas Rangers in 1976, is preparing for a possible release from prison by planning a comeback attempt in professional baseball as a pitcher.

Simpson, 33, has been throwing daily for the past four months at the Federal Prison Camp at Lompoc. He was transferred there in August from a similar facility at Boron, Calif.

The former All-Southern Section outfielder has served more than five years of a 10-year sentence on a conviction of one count of conspiring to distribute cocaine and two counts of illegal use of a telephone to further a conspiracy. With good behavior, Simpson is eligible for parole in about a year.

Earlier this week, Simpson said he had developed four pitches--a changeup, fastball, curveball and split-finger fastball. He is arranging to have several scouts watch him work out. A visitor to the prison camp watched Simpson throw earlier this week.

“He was a little wild at the start because I think he was nervous, but he had four good pitches and some good velocity,” said agent Don Giardina, owner of Allegiance Sports Management. Giardina estimated that Simpson threw consistently in the 88-to-90 m.p.h. range.

After signing a professional contract, the 6-foot-3, 225-pound Simpson spent three weeks with the Rangers, then was sent to the team’s double-A club in Sarasota, Fla., and never made it back. After three years of anemic minor league statistics that led to releases from the Rangers, New York Mets and San Diego Padres organizations, he was out of baseball.

Giardina, who specializes in handling contracts for minor-league players, was made aware of Simpson’s desire to attempt a comeback by former major league slugger Nate Colbert, who is serving a six-month sentence in Lompoc after a conviction on bank fraud charges. Colbert was a power-hitting first baseman who slugged 38 home runs twice with the Padres. The career .243 hitter later worked for the Padres and was a batting instructor for a minor-league team in Riverside when he was sent to prison.

Colbert said he was impressed with the velocity of Simpson’s pitches, and he predicted that Simpson would be signed by the end of this year’s spring training.

“With expansion (of the major leagues) coming up, pitching is going to be real thin,” Colbert said. “Some team could come in and get a guy they can start at one of their clubs that will give them a fresh, live arm and some stability. It’s worth a shot.”

Realistically, Giardina said, Simpson’s best chance would be with one of several independent Class-A teams.

To Simpson, that would be fine. He is eager to put his life back together.

Two community colleges without coaches are pondering the future of their football programs.

The more drastic of the two situations is at Rio Hondo College near Whittier, where Athletic Director Ellie Bewley said administrators are considering dropping football.

At Long Beach City College, Athletic Director Chuck McFerrin is awaiting word from the college district board as to whether he can open the football coaching position to outside applicants or if he must assign one of five former football coaches already on the physical education staff to run the program. In either case, McFerrin said, the Vikings will continue to field a team.

Neither school had much success under former coaches. Wil Shaw, who was 28-48-2 in eight seasons at Long Beach, was fired in December after a 1-9 season. Rio Hondo Coach Alex Henderson, who was 2-18 in two seasons, resigned earlier this month. He cited personal reasons for the decision. Bewley would not elaborate, but said she was shocked and disappointed by Henderson’s decision.

“We were on a roll,” she said. “The kids and the coaches felt very good about the team, and we had some wonderful recruits in the door here. (The resignation) was a real blow.”

Bewley said she expects a decision on the fate of the program within two weeks.

In announcing the dismissal of Shaw, McFerrin said he wanted to give the beleaguered football program “a new direction.” The Vikings have not won a conference title since 1964.