Norco’s Arriaran Puts the Emphasis on Team

After the worst shooting night of her life, in the last game of her high school career, Erika Arriaran made no excuses.

“You have to come to play,” she said after scoring only 22 points, “and I didn’t.”

She then signed 150 autographs and gave a little girl the sweatshirt off her back.

A few weeks later, she apologized at a team banquet for not delivering a Southern Section basketball championship, Norco having lost to Temecula Valley in a Division I-AA quarterfinal.

There are no apologies necessary for Arriaran’s season, or career. The Cougar guard is The Times’ girls’ basketball player of the year.

Arriaran brought out the best in teammates, led Norco to a 28-1 record and took the program to unprecedented heights. Hers was the only team west of the Big Apple to beat Fullerton Troy, a game in which she scored 41 in a 66-62 double-overtime thriller.

Norco had lost four times to Troy, including in the 2004 Division II-AA title game.

“What I saw in her eyes was ‘No team owns me,’ ” Norco Coach Rick Thompson said. “It didn’t give us a championship, but there was redemption.”

Only the No. 1 team in the country, unbeaten Queens (N.Y.) Christ the King, scored more against Troy (33-2) than Arriaran did by herself, and King barely did so in a 47-44 victory.

A team player who dominated as needed, she averaged 25.6 points against 14 opponents ranked in The Times’ top 25.

Six times against opponents Norco beat by an average of 40.3 points, Arriaran didn’t even shoot, knowing that her scoring average would suffer. She averaged 17.2 points.

She shot 43.1% from the field, 42.2% from three-point range and 88.9% from the free-throw line, and she averaged 8.6 rebounds, 7.0 assists and 1.8 steals.

“She didn’t just talk about being a team player,” Thompson said, “she did it.”

When her father wanted her to go for the school’s single-game three-point record, “She put me in my place,” Jim Arriaran recalled. “She said, ‘I don’t want to go for individual records, especially against a team we can beat 100-10. What does that prove?’ ”

Some of Arriaran’s best work came in the fourth quarter.

“Nobody’s better,” Thompson said. “I’ve been involved in girls’ basketball for 15 years, and on TV or in person, I’ve never seen anyone who passes, dribbles or has a better pull-up jump shot than she does. She makes the great pass look ordinary.”

She lived up to the hype as a freshman, shooting 47% and averaging 16.5 points and 4.5 assists.

Home-schooled as a sophomore, she played in a men’s league that improved her toughness. Her Norco teammates were forced to improve, and when she returned as a junior, her 17.1 points and 5.4 assists helped the Cougars to their first sectional final.

Then came a senior season that was almost perfect.

Next stop: Texas.

“Erika isn’t going to go somewhere to uphold tradition, but to establish tradition, that’s why UConn and Tennessee were never in the mix,” Thompson said. “It’s part of her feeling of disappointment that she wasn’t able to [win a title] for us.

“But she presented us with Erika Arriaran, which was better than a championship.”