Who's No. 1?

[mkbgdns]

The majority of Cal high school girls' basketball teams are done for this season. Most of them had losing records. I'd guess there were more winless teams than undefeated teams. We focus on the front-runners, but like it or not, this majority of girls are the face of California girls' high school basketball. They deserve our recognition.

I've followed Miramonte since 2000, and for most of that time they've been at or near the top of their league. I only go to games that I think will be competitive, for entertainment value. But one year, I went to see them play a team that had been at the bottom of the league for a while, struggled to win a few games each year, may have had a winless season in there. I was curious what that team was all about.

I was amazed. These kids came out, played hard, kept their chins up, never gave up, and left me amazed. Clearly they wanted to play the game, and their victories came with every point they scored, every rebound they got. Needless to say, they were badly outscored and out rebounded. Basketball is a hard game, and they had skills, just not enough to win. I started thinking about this while reading the thread on whether the tournament was too big. I was particularly affected when Clay mentioned how his kids were thrilled to get in as a 14th seed. His kids wanna play. And I think so do the vast majority of girls who choose basketball as a sport. So here's to them all, my hat's off.

 

[ClayK]

That's a really good post, because wins and the final score don't always tell the whole story ...

So my 14th seeded Bentley Phoenix went to St. Joseph Notre Dame in a first-round game. The Pilots are obviously quite good, with a 6-2 forward, a 5-11 center and another tall center off the bench, plus good guards and good coaching.

We guard their two tall girls with our 5-6 posts and we basically have to rely on dribbling through their 2-2-1 press with our top two players because most of our players have never played club ball, or even in rec leagues (much less CYO).

So we, miraculously, surprise them in the first quarter and jump out to a 15-11 lead. Not surprisingly, they get serious and proceed to go on a 38-3 run over the next two quarters and win the game 67-26.

But our girls -- despite being pressed by their starters down 35 in the fourth quarter -- never quit playing hard. They took charges, battled for loose balls, kept trying to get through the press (even though the turnover total was off the chart) and were undaunted by the score and the way the game played out.

So yes, SJND won the game and moved on, but it's not as if our girls -- and a whole lot of teams just like ours at all levels throughout Northern California -- should think of themselves as losers. After all, only seven teams that made the playoffs will finish the season with a win. All the rest will lose somewhere along the way, and how they handle that loss is in many ways as important as how far they advanced before it happened.