Small Wonders

Trailing by four points at halftime, Coach Lindsay Strothers sent the Oak Park High girls’ basketball team to the locker room and collected his thoughts.

“I’m thinking to myself, ‘Am I gonna yell a little? Am I gonna yell a lot?’ ” Strothers said. “If I yell too little, they might think I don’t care. If I yell too much, it might be tough on their confidence.”

Strothers walked into the locker room and found junior forward Michelle Bregar doing the dirty work for him.

“We’re not playing hard!” Bregar yelled.

Then it was senior guard Kim Bryan’s turn.

“We’re not rebounding!” Bryan barked.

The ball bounced to Holly Stewart.

“We’re not playing defense!” Stewart shouted.

Strothers smiled.

“I didn’t have to say anything,” he said.

The Eagles rallied in the second half to rout St. Bonaventure in a Tri-Valley League game. It was part of a season in which Oak Park (23-5) won the program’s first Southern Section championship Saturday with a 71-64 victory over perennial power Morro Bay in the Division IV-AA final.

Oak Park can take another step when it hosts Granite Hills (22-8) in the first round of the state basketball Southern Regional Division IV playoffs tonight at 7.

Bregar is the emotional leader of an overachieving team that lacks a true post player. With no player taller than 5 feet 10, the Eagles have won with aggressive defense, a fastbreak offense and sheer hustle.

“This team brings its hard hats and lunch boxes to work,” Strothers said. “They’ve got a big, gigantic heart.”

Oak Park’s lack of size deceives opponents.

“At the jump ball, people will look at us like we’ll never win,” said Stewart, a junior forward. “And more often then not, we do.”

Bryan (5-8) is the shooting guard and the only senior of a starting five that includes forwards Bregar (5-9) and Stewart (5-10), freshman guard Shir Raanan (5-6) and junior point guard Jannel Buckley (5-4).

The Eagles are the little team that has run circles around the big girls this season. They became the first Oak Park girls’ team in any sport to win a section championship. It was only the third section title in the school’s 20-year history.

The numbers are balanced. Bregar is Oak Park’s leading scorer, averaging 17.4 points and 7.5 rebounds. Bryan averages 13.2 points and 5.4 rebounds. Stewart averages 11.6 points and a team-high 8.5 rebounds.

Bryan, Bregar, Buckley and Stewart have played together since they were freshmen. Strothers became an assistant that season under Rob Hall, the former boys’ coach who took over the team when former girls’ coach Keith Case resigned two days before the season started.

“That was a tough season,” Bryan said. “There was a lot of stuff going on. The bright spot was that [Strothers] was here.”

Strothers, who played at Fairfax High, has eight years of college coaching experience, including stops as a women’s assistant at USC and Cal State Northridge. He ran clinics in the Conejo Valley and had coached many of Oak Park’s players since they were in seventh grade.

He molded the Eagles into a team of slashing shooters who have proved they can beat bigger teams with modest numbers. Oak Park made 11 three-point baskets in the section final, including Bryan’s six-of-15 performance. She scored 20 points, with Bregar held to nine.

“We know how to beat teams with big post players,” Stewart said. “We had to do it to win our league and win our [section] championship.”

The Eagles went unbeaten in league play for the first time by containing 6-0 center Sarah Grieve of Carpinteria.

Morro Bay’s Karena Bonds scored 30 points on Saturday in the section final, but Oak Park didn’t allow any other Pirate player to score more than 12.

Bregar is the key for the Eagles.

“If she’s not focused, we’re not focused,” Strothers said.

Her halftime shouting spree is an example of her leadership.

“I was so furious [against St. Bonaventure],” Bregar said. “Our whole team was playing down. I let everyone know.”

Now, opponents know Oak Park is for real. The Eagles boast a fiery intensity and work ethic enforced by Stothers, who customarily runs three-hour practices that include long wind-sprint sessions.

“We run people to death,” Bregar said. “That’s what we do best.”