Mendiolas Making Their Mark at Washington

Did anyone not expect Giuliana Mendiola to make a difference?

Mendiola, The Times’ Orange County girls’ basketball player of the year last season, attended Washington as part of a package with her sister, Gioconda, who graduated from El Toro High a year earlier than her sister.

Washington is 12-6 overall against one of the tougher schedules in the country, 5-3 in the Pacific 10 Conference, and last week received votes in the Associated Press Top 25 poll. Last season, the Huskies were 8-22, 4-14.

Washington’s 7-3 nonconference record is its best since the 1997-98 season, when it was 9-0.

Giuliana has started 14 of 16 games and is averaging 10.8 points, a team-high seven rebounds, 3.8 assists and 30 minutes.

Gioconda, who put off attending college for a year so that she and Giuliana could enter with the same eligibility, has played in 15 games and is averaging about seven minutes and 1.8 points. She scored a season-high 10 against UCLA on Jan. 4.

Both are guards. Giuliana is 5 feet 11, Gioconda 5-9. As she did in high school, Giuliana is wearing No. 13, the same number worn by her mother, Alicia, on the Peruvian national team. Gioconda, who lost a game of one-on-one to Giuliana years ago for the right to wear No. 13, wears No. 31.

When Washington beat Arizona State two weeks ago, it was the first time in four years the Huskies had won in the Grand Canyon State.

Going into the weekend against Stanford, which featured another county player of the year, Chelsea Trotter of Brea Olinda, Giuliana Mendiola shared the conference lead with four double-doubles.

She and Andrea Lalum, a 6-4 freshman center from Bozeman, Mont., are starting for the Huskies, along with a sophomore, Loree Payne, of Havre, Mont.

CARDINAL CONTRIBUTOR

Trotter, the county player of the year two seasons ago, hasn’t played nearly as much as Mendiola. Trotter is averaging 11 minutes, 3.7 points and 3.1 rebounds at Stanford. She is shooting 52% from the field.

Stanford is 10-7, 4-3, losing six of seven games away from its home arena. Last week was the second in a row that the Cardinal was not ranked. A month ago, it was ranked No. 14 in the AP poll.

Trotter scored a season-high eight points and had eight rebounds and three assists against San Francisco . She missed her freshman season at Brea because of a torn knee ligament, but missed only one game this season with an injury--against Utah because of a sprained ankle.

RECRUITING THE ORANGE

Conference softball coaches picked Washington to finish fourth in the Pac-10, but that didn’t prevent the Huskies from being No. 4 in the USA Today/NFCA preseason coaches’ poll released last week.

There are three good reasons: Kelly Hauxhurst, a senior outfielder from Westminster High, Jaime Clark, a sophomore shortstop from Foothill, and Tia Bollinger, a freshman pitcher from Mater Dei.

In her first three seasons, Hauxhurst has played in all but one game, and has been successful on 50 of 54 stolen-base attempts. She batted .326 last season and is the team’s single-season record-holder for sacrifice hits, with 15.

Hauxhurst will be a captain this season with Clark, who batted .362 with 23 home runs and 67 RBIs in 71 games.

Clark was The Times’ Orange County player of the year in 1999, and Bollinger was the player of the year in 2000.

But Washington will be without All-American catcher Jenny Topping, who decided in December to transfer to Cal State Fullerton.

Topping, a graduate of La Habra High, has three seasons of eligibility remaining. She earned All-American honors after leading the nation in home runs with 24, RBIs with 90 and slugging percentage at .960. She ranked fifth nationally with a .438 batting average.

NOTEWORTHY

Matt Jameson, a graduate of Newport Harbor High, is averaging more than 19 minutes a game as point guard at Miami of Ohio (8-11, 4-4 in the Mid-American Conference). A 6-foot-2 sophomore, Jameson was averaging 2.5 points, 1.4 rebounds and 1.4 assists heading into the Redhawks’ game against Boise State Saturday. . . . Scott Dore, a teammate of Jameson’s on the Newport Harbor boys’ volleyball and basketball teams, returns to Orange County with the Princeton men’s volleyball team, which will open its season against UC Irvine at 7 p.m. Tuesday.

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Staff writers Paul McLeod and Bob Rohwer contributed to this report.

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