Girls basketball

For the seventh week in a row, the Maryknoll Spartans are the unanimous pick by coaches and media as the No. 1 team in the Star-Advertiser Girls Basketball Top 10. The Spartans repelled Mid-Pacific 64-44, then-No. 2 Kamehameha 45-36 and Punahou 60-26 last week. Maryknoll is 8-0 in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu (22-2 overall) and has clinched at least a tie for first place in the regular season. Maryknoll can seal first place and an automatic state-tournament berth with […]

Chico Furtado is not quite quite Santa Claus, at least not on the basketball court. In the moments after No. 1 Maryknoll pulled out a tough 45-36 win over No. 2 Kamehameha — at Kekuhaupio Gymnasium — that elusive perfect performance eluded the Lady Spartans. So what’s new? Even at 21-2 overall, 7-0 in Interscholastic League of Honolulu play, moving one big step closer to an automatic state-tournament berth, Maryknoll didn’t have the consistency its grizzled coach seeks. The difference, […]

The shuffling is something strangely fascinating. At the top, Maryknoll, Kamehameha and most of the Top 10 is entrenched at this moment. Upsets happen, things change. But below the 10, wow. Doing a Top 35 list has been a microscope on more than half the teams that play girls basketball statewide. It’s awfully time consuming, yet satisfying. And Lord knows it’s just scratching the surface. A few teams are on the decline. A few are swinging back up. Mililani? Talented, […]

Mililani, which finished off a perfect 10-0 regular season with a 39-19 win over Nanakuli on Tuesday night, is the only undefeated team heading into the OIA girls basketball playoffs that start next Tuesday. Kahuku (8-2) snuck in as the top seed out of the East after beating McKinley, 38-34, on Tuesday. The Red Raiders finished in a first-place tie with Kalani (8-2), which lost to Moanalua, 60-55, on Tuesday. Kahuku won the tiebreaker via a 41-38 win in the […]

Maryknoll (19-2) marched through ILH country last week and ran roughshod with wins over ‘Iolani and Sacred Hearts to retain the No. 1 ranking in the Star-Advertiser Girls Basketball Top 10 released Monday. The Spartans are 5-0 in the Interscholastic League of Honolulu, where six of this week’s Top 10 reside. Maryknoll collected all 12 first-place votes. Maryknoll is also 13-2 against Top 10 and Top-10 level teams. The only losses on the Spartans’ ledger were to Southridge (Ore.) and […]

Other than OIA West regular season champion Mililani, which has locked up the top seed in the OIA playoffs as the only undefeated OIA team remaining, just about everyone else is playing for something on the final day of the regular season Tuesday. The schedule makers should give themselves a pat on the back for the matchups that line the Tuesday schedule. In the West, Campbell (7-2), which won seven straight games in the regular season in 2017 before losing […]

After all this time, I finally got to see the team that beat Lahainaluna. When the week began, the Campbell Sabers were 7-0 in the OIA West, a team ranked No. 8 in the Star-Advertiser Girls Basketball Top 10. Built on solid leadership from top to bottom, with a fourth-year court general in Gieani Balino. Tonight, the Sabers were coming off a 37-34 loss to Leilehua, facing the unbeaten Mililani Trojans with first place at stake. A Campbell win would […]