New Faces Look to Propel Centaurs Basketball

After leading the Culver City High School girls junior varsity basketball team to league championships four years in a row, coach Julian Anderson will now get a chance to show what he can do with varsity.

Anderson is in his first year as head coach of the Centaurs' girls varsity team, but he's no basketball novice. He spent 13 years coaching at Belmont High School prior to his four years as the Centaurs' JV coach. In his time at the helm for the JV girls, his teams took first place in the Ocean League every season, and in 2008 and 2009 they went undefeated.

He'll be working with a lot of familiar faces this season, as the varsity team returns only three girls from last year's team and only one senior. The Centaurs will be led predominately by a group of sophomores and juniors this year. But that may not be a bad thing.

For the 2010-11 season, Anderson said his goal is to instill a new spirit of dedication and accountability that he believes has been missing from the varsity team in recent years.

"Dedication is probably the most important aspect of all this," Anderson said. "If I can just get them to dedicate to the program then I think we'll do well."

The team's goals this year are to take at least third place in the Ocean League and get a manageable game in the CIF playoffs.

Last year, the girls finished the season with a record of 17-12, which placed them fourth in the Ocean League. A fourth place finish and an early end to the season have been the team's modus operandi for the past few years. Anderson is looking for his disciplined philosophy to change that, and he's not the only one.

"This year we're kind of in a redeveloping stage, because we lost nine seniors," said sophomore point guard Taylor Tanita. "I think we're just trying to develop our team because last year there was a lot of one-on-one play, and this year I think we'll try to move the ball around and get a lot more people [involved]."

The Centaurs record currently sits at 3-1. This week the girls made it to the second round of the Inglewood City of Champions Tournament by defeating Chadwick (Palos Verdes) 44-30 and Gahr (Cerritos) 50-39. Unfortunately, they lost on Wednesday 46-49 to South Torrance.

Anderson said the key to the Centaurs winning games like that one in the future will be minimizing turnovers and playing up-tempo, fundamentally sound basketball. He's had his players focus heavily on conditioning in the preseason to prepare them for the offense.

The coach said that he's implemented the up-tempo offense this year for one simple reason.

"Slow players can't play fast," he said.

Another reason Anderson may have implemented a faster paced game plan is the Centaurs' lack of height. Junior forward and three-year starter Lunden Junious is one of the team's tallest players and she's only 5'10".

Junious said the team will be looking to attack teams with speed to overcome their lack of size.

"We don't have a lot of height, so we're gonna have to be quick on our feet," said Junious. "We're gonna have to be that team who, at the last two minutes, is not tired and is running the other team to death."