Westchester girls basketball defeats Birmingham for City Open Division title
PASADENA — The opening nerves of a championship game plagued both the Westchester and Birmingham girls basketball teams Saturday night.
The top-seeded Comets settled in, but the second-seeded Eagles never did.
Westchester’s on-ball defensive pressure overwhelmed Birmingham, which struggled mightily over the final 10 minutes of the first half and guard Savannah Myles scored 22 points in a 60-37 victory to lead the Comets to the CIF L.A. City Section Open Division title at Pasadena City College.
Westchester (26-3) won its sixth City championship and first since 2023.
Comets coach E.J. Jackson, who was the interim coach on the last title team, was proud to add another to the collection.
“This year, it was my team, my girls,” Jackson said. “Them girls will run through the wall for me and that’s all I can ask for. They play hard and we play together.”
The Patriots (27-4) quickly lost their brief rhythm after the first few minutes. Guard Kayla Tanijiri’s layup gave Birmingham a 14-9 advantage at the 2:13 mark of the first quarter. Then, everything started to come up empty.
Westchester held Birmingham scoreless the rest of the half. The Comets were partly responsible, but the Patriots also failed to convert several point-blank attempts.
Birmingham closed the half with 21 consecutive missed shots, including all 17 second-quarter attempts.
“We’re a young, young team,” Birmingham coach Victor Koopongsakorn said. “We tried to prepare as much as possible for their athleticism and their speed. The girls gave it their all, 100 percent effort. We just came up short tonight.”
Westchester took advantage behind Myles’ 12 first-half points and took a 31-14 lead into halftime. The Comets made six of 14 shots in the quarter to get separation.
Myles agreed with Koopongsakorn, saying the plan was to speed Birmingham up and make Tanjiri uncomfortable as she brought the ball up the floor.
“We were able to pressure the ball,” Myles said. “They couldn’t really handle our pressure.
“Then, we were able to just run our offense. We didn’t let them speed us up — we sped them up.”
Birmingham snapped the cold streak, getting consecutive layups from Tanijiri and Kiara Wakabi to open the third quarter. But the emotions and frustrations were evident.
After making a free throw to pull within 41-19 late in the third, Tanjiri looked up to the rafters, raised her arms and yelled, in relief, “Thank you!”
When she exited the game in the closing minutes, Koopongsakorn reminded Tanjiri, a sophomore, that even crushing defeats have their lessons.
“From this experience, they’re gonna learn a lot from this,” Koopongsakorn said. “We’ll be back.
“(Tanjiri) was under the weather the whole week, she missed a couple practices. I told her even though she wasn’t 100 percent, I was proud of her that she gave the effort that she gave. We’re a young team and she’s gonna have a couple more shots. But you sometimes have to experience this kind of heartbreak to come back stronger.”
Tanjiri finished with 11 points and Wakabi had a team-high 12.
The outcome was inevitable once the Comets took a 44-27 lead into the fourth, and it was them who were raising their arms — victoriously — by the final buzzer.
Westchester guard Diem Gilbert added 10 points, guard/forward Skylar Newsome chipped in nine and guard/forward Saxon Bagby had seven.
“Once the nerves calmed down and we figured out what they were doing, trying to do to us, I think we got to it,” Jackson said. “We knew (Tanjiri) could hurt us and we just had to slow her down. We made them take difficult shots. They attacked the rim well, but our girls stepped in and made them miss a couple shots also.”
As Myles dribbled out the final seconds in the backcourt, the rest of the team swarmed her. Myles fired the ball straight up into the air as the PA announcer declared Westchester the City champions.
It was the second consecutive year the Comets knocked the Patriots out of the playoffs, but Myles remembered losing the title game to Birmingham in her freshman year and savored the payback moment.
“It means a lot to me,” Myles said. “This was my get-back.”