NOTES : The Best Average Doesn’t Always Make the Grade

It obviously requires more than outstanding grades to make the GTE/CoSida women’s academic All-American basketball team.

Two Virginia players made it, but the one with the highest grade-point average did not. Junior Heather Burge earned second-team honors with a 3.3 GPA and senior Tammi Reiss was a third-team selection with her 3.2 average.

But junior Dena Evans, the team’s top student with a 3.85 average, was bypassed. The best she did was make the all-district team.

The selection process mystifies Angela Manolakas, sports information director at Virginia.

“I understand that basketball ability enters into the decision, but it isn’t like Dena isn’t a good player,” Manolakas said. “She’s a starter for us.”

Virginia doesn’t have exclusive rights in the intelligence department. Stanford junior forward Chris MacMurdo is a third-team academic All-American with a 3.5 GPA, and eight of the 11 Southwest Missouri State players have cumulative GPAs of 3.27 or better.

Although they are identical 6-foot-5 twins, Virginia’s Heather and Heidi Burge have had anything but identical careers for the Cavaliers--at least to this point.

Heather scored a team-high 575 points this season. Heidi had 325 points, the fourth-best total on the team. Heather also had the rebounding edge, 279 to 200.

You couldn’t blame the coaches and the student body at Virginia for thinking that all the women who live on the Palos Verdes Peninsula are 6-5. First, the area gave them the Burge twins of Palos Verdes High. Next season, Jeffra Gausepohl, 6-5, of Peninsula High will join the team. All three were coached in high school by Wendell Yoshida, who guided Peninsula to the state Division I title this season.

Since it is the least-known school in the Final Four and has already been anointed as the Cinderella team, the perception is that Southwest Missouri State is also the smallest of the four schools.

Wrong. It is the largest, with an enrollment of 20,672. Virginia is second with 17,606, followed by Western Kentucky, 15,256, and Stanford, 6,556.

The television blackout of the Final Four has been lifted because ticket sales exceeded the required 12,000 total. As of Thursday afternoon, 12,072 tickets had been sold. Tickets will be available at the gate on game days.

Debbie Scott, a 6-1 junior forward for Western Kentucky, is the first player to play with Final Four teams representing different schools. In 1989, she played for NCAA champion Tennessee. She transferred to Western Kentucky in 1990.

Three of the four coaches are women. The lone male is Paul Sanderford of Western Kentucky. Stanford is coached by Tara VanDerveer, Southwest Missouri State by Cheryl Burnett and Virginia by Debbie Ryan. The four have a combined 992-349 (.740) record in 44 years of coaching. Ryan has won 330 games, VanDerveer 320, Sanderford 247 and Burnett 92.

Kate Paye, a freshman reserve for Stanford, is the sister of former Cardinal basketball and football standout John Paye, who attended Stanford from 1983-87. John, now a Northern California businessman, coached his sister’s team at Menlo High for three years. During that period, Menlo won three consecutive Division V state championships. Kate was player of the year all three of those years.