A perfect season

Saville girls' squad goes 20-0 while winning CCSD title

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Only one basketball team in the Clark County School District can claim it went the entire season without a loss and won the championship -- the Saville Middle School girls team.

Led by first-year coach Chip Fanning, the second-year Lady Desert Hawks defeated Miller Middle School, 51-41, in the championship game on March 23 at Valley High School to win their first title and put the wraps on a perfect 20-0 season.

After running the table in the Northwest II Division, Saville, 8101 N. Torrey Pines Drive, opened up its postseason by defeating Hyde Park Middle School, 45-28, on March 14 to increase its win streak to 17 games. Alexis Byrd led all scorer with 14 points and teammates Chelsie Pitt and co-captain Elisha Hensey added nine each.

In its next playoff game on March 16, Saville ousted a talented and then-undefeated Canarelli Middle School squad, 38-29, as Hensey scored 11 points and Pitt and Byrd each added 10 points.

In the semifinals, the Desert Hawks defeated Northwest II counterpart Leavitt Middle School for a third straight time, 51-36, on March 21 as Pitt led all scorers with 16 points. Byrd finished with 15 points and co-captain Jessica Scarpati tallied 13 in the win that sent Saville into the championship game.

In the championship game, Saville grabbed an early lead but the Bobcats went on a run to start the second half and pulled within two points. But the Desert Hawks went on a 9-0 run led by Ashley Dawkins and Pitt to put the game away and give Saville the 51-41 win and with it, the CCSD championship.

Hensey led Saville in the title tilt with 13 points while Pitt scored 12, Byrd had 11, Dawkins finished with seven points, Scarpati tallied six and Kourtney Martinez had two points.

"We approached it just like any other game," Fanning said.

The coach said his team was in a major groove all season and played the title game like any other contest.

"They knew what was expected of them, they knew what they were supposed to do and they just went out there and did what they were supposed to do," he said. "And they were stoked when we won."

Fanning thought the reason his team had such a fantastic year was something all championship teams have -- a bunch of really great players.

"I think the difference was just the talent level that we had," he said. "Three of my starters play down at TBA (Tarkanian Basketball Academy) on the same team and then I have another two, maybe three players that play on different teams down there at Tarkanian.

"Based on the talent, I went in there and said, 'Here's the deal, the expectation is that we win every single game this year. I don't think that's unreasonable with the talent that we have on this team.' "

Fanning, whose team averaged 45 points this season while allowing just 21 per game, said the play of his starting guards Byrd and Hensey was a huge reason why the 2-year-old school now has a nice big piece of hardware for its trophy case.

"It was phenomenal. Those two guards Alexis and Elisha just carried us," he said. "Those two girls are some of the best on-ball defenders that I have ever seen at this level."

The team at Saville -- which is zoned for Shadow Ridge High School and brand new Arbor View High School -- was made up of mostly seventh- and eighth-graders, with one sixth-grader in the mix. The squad featured one player measuring 5-foot-11-inches (Dawkins) and four players at 5-foot-10 (Scarpati, Martinez, Pitt and sixth-grader Sabriya Coleman), a fairly tall team by middle school standards.

Besides Byrd, Hensey, Pitt, Scarpati, Dawkins, Martinez and Coleman, Saville's roster also included eighth-graders Destiny Ebel, Nylasia Packer, Lindsey Stapleton and seventh-graders Calie Turley and Samantha Cable. The team's manager was Madison Greco.

Winning the junior high championship was especially satisfying for the Desert Hawks, who lost in the championship game last year after finishing with an 18-2 record.

In its two years of existence, the team has assembled a mind-boggling 38-2 record.