In Girls’ Basketball, This Is as Good as It Gets

“Don’t faint, Coach,” a fan said to Brea Olinda girls’ basketball Coach Jeff Sink. Sink said he wouldn’t, but he didn’t look too sure.

For as Sink said, “That’s about as good as girls’ high school basketball can be.”

Harbor City Narbonne Coach James Anderson said, “I think you’ve seen the beginning of a new and great rivalry.”

Both coaches were right.

There was no better sporting event in Los Angeles or Orange County on Saturday than this game between two of the best girls’ teams in the country.

Finally, after losing an 11-point second-half lead, Brea defeated Narbonne, 83-80, in overtime. Chelsea Trotter, a junior for Brea, had 32 points.

College scouts from Tennessee, Ohio State and elsewhere in attendance.

“This says a lot about how far women’s sports has come,” Sink said while he was trying not to faint. “This is so good for women’s sports.”

An hour before the game there was a traffic jam in the parking lot of Brea Olinda High. Vans and four-wheel drives tried to make U-turns and dart into a space not fit for a VW.

The fans who had smartly arrived two hours early were sitting elbow to elbow at picnic tables and chowing down on barbecue sandwiches, plenty of good eating for $2.

The male high school students came into the gym with faces painted green and gold and cutoff basketballs on their heads instead of baseball caps.

And, yes, the 1,750-seat gym was sold out, probably more than sold out, as one official estimated there might be 2,000 people inside and some still trying to poke their heads inside a door and catch a glimpse of Brea’s Trotter or Narbonne’s Ebony Hoffman.

Brea and Narbonne, two teams that are used to being not only among the best in California but also the best in the nation, had created a buzz. Said Trotter: “I think I speak for my whole team when I say we’ve never been so nervous or anxious about a game in our lives.”

In fact, had Narbonne not been put on probation in the state and thus ineligible for the state championships this year, the Gauchos would have been ranked No. 2 in the nation and Brea No. 3 in the USA Today poll that is accepted as the most accurate ranking of national high school programs. But USA Today won’t rank teams ineligible for their own state tournaments and so Brea started the season ranked No. 2 instead.

Anderson, who was wearing a black Nike turtleneck, black pants and a black jacket, said a USA Today pollster called him and said, “Brea got your ranking,” and so, yes, Anderson said before last night’s tipoff, his girls had most definitely been looking forward to this game.

As Ohio State assistant coach and lead recruiter Cathy McDonald said, “If your own team wasn’t playing a game today, you were here.”

Rosa Stokes, assistant coach for Long Beach State, which has received a commitment from Brea guard Jeri Costello, said, “Costello told us she’s had this date circled since the schedule came out.”

The Brea Ladycats won a record sixth state championship last year and had not a discrepancy in the transcript of a Narbonne player been discovered and ruled a violation serious enough to merit probation, Narbonne and Brea might be looking forward to another meeting somewhere in the state tournament.

But that won’t happen.

It has taken a while for these two California girls’ powerhouses to arrange a regular-season game. This was to be the first, until Narbonne and Brea found themselves playing at the prestigious Santa Barbara holiday tournament in December. Narbonne won that game by two points and so if the Lady Gauchos had to embrace this major regular-season game as a substitute for the state tournament, the Ladycats wanted to redeem themselves after that December loss.

Trotter, a 6-foot-3 junior, and Hoffman, a 6-foot-2 junior, were the premier players, the reason that coaches from places such as Ohio State and Tennessee had come to town. McDonald was going to have to catch a red-eye back to Columbus so she could be on the bench when Ohio State plays this afternoon. “Which should tell you something about the talent on the floor tonight,” McDonald said.

Brea already has three seniors who have committed to Division I schools--Costello; point guard Lindsey Davidson, who had 26 points, to George Washington, and forward Kate Ides to Harvard. The best of Narbonne’s players are sophomores and juniors and so can look forward to state tournaments future.

These were well-coached team full of fine athletes playing in front of a packed house on a Saturday night. The losers were stunned, almost too dejected to speak. The winners were ecstatic, almost too stunned to speak.

Some day, though, girls from both teams will want to remember this evening with delight. It was a special performance. It was something that high school boys have experienced forever. It will be something high school girls can have now too.

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Diane Pucin can be reached at her e-mail address: diane.pucin@latimes.com