Woodbridge girls basketball team off to a slow start but coach likes team’s chances in PCL

Woodbridge coach Keith Clarkson said he set up a tough schedule to get his team ready for league.

Woodbridge’s girls basketball team has struggled out of the gate with a 3-6 record but Coach Keith Clarkson believes the Warriors have the potential to compete down the road for a Pacific Coast League title.

Woodbridge went 2-2 in the South Coast Classic, defeating Yorba Linda 46-37 and Tesoro 39-31 before falling to Los Alamitos 85-37 and Huntington Beach 51-33 on Saturday in the final day of the tournament at University.

“We play well in spurts, I’ve seen some flashes of real great play,” Clarkson said after Saturday’s game. “Then we make a couple silly mistakes. It’s all from the inexperience. We have three girls with large experience from last year. Everyone else is brand new or freshmen.”

There are four players returning from last year’s team, Clarkson said.

This year’s starters consist of juniors Erika Maggard and Tiffany Nguyen. They were both starters on last year’s team. Also in the group is sophomore Kathleen Wasserman, who was the first player off the bench last year and junior Rachel Yamato, who saw  limited minutes but was moved into a starting role this season, according to Clarkson.

The fifth starter has been filled by one of the three freshmen on the team, Clarkson added.

Maggard scored 17 points to lead the Warriors against Huntington Beach.

“We have some potential to be very good,” Clarkson said.

Clarkson said he set up a tough schedule to help his team down the road.

“We purposely scheduled a very tough non-league,” he said. “We’ve played at least three top 25 teams and we have three coming up so we’re going to battle test them and work hard. I’ve seen improvement every game. We’ve had some great games and we’ve been up and down.

“I think we have a great chance in league; we’re real young. I like where we’re at now, we just need to be a little bit further along. Hopefully we will regroup this week and put it all together. I like our future. We just need to learn to play more together and the chemistry is not quite there yet but I like where we’re at and I think we can get to the next level, I really do. The purpose of playing tough is to get us tough. We’re not playing small schools, we’re playing big schools who play big-time basketball. Every game we’ve been in so I’ve been happy with lots of it. We just have a little cleaning up to do.”

Clarkson is hoping the Warriors progress and believes they will be ready for the start of league play.

“Our goal has always been to win a league championship. Hopefully our schedule is going to get us ready for league,” he said.

Woodbridge is back in action on Tuesday at Sonora.

ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM FOR SOUTH COAST CLASSIC ANNOUNCED

-Tim Burt, OC Sports Zone; timburt@ocsportszone.com