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BISHOP MONTGOMERY GIRLS

Southern Section Division III-AA

The Torrance Bishop Montgomery girls’ basketball team is both the underdog and the favorite as it readies for the Southern Section Division III-AA title game against Pasadena Muir at the Pyramid in Long Beach on Friday night at 6:15.

The Knights are a wild-card wonder with a 11-15 record and glass slippers in their gym bag, but they’re also one of the best basketball teams in the Southland.

That is the story-line for Bishop Montgomery’s season, which could get more bizarre if a team with a losing record wins a section championship and advances to next week’s state tournament.

It has been strange because of a clerical error by the school’s athletic department, which caused two sophomore transfers--Nicole Prado from Gardena Serra and Jana’e Zahn from Redondo--to be ruled ineligible in January, forfeiting all games in which they played.

The players have since been reinstated.

“We went from 18-5 to 8-15, and from probably being the top-seeded team to being picked as a wild card,” Coach Yvette Angel said.

But the surest wild-card entry in the playoffs has routed its three postseason opponents, including top-seeded Moorpark, 68-38, which had the unenviable position of holding the position in the bracket that Bishop Montgomery felt it deserved.

The Knights start four seniors and boast a front line of two 6-foot forwards, Marci McGreevy and junior Tishara Carter, and 6-2 center Tiffany Washington, who has signed a letter of intent to play at USC next season.

Jamilah Jones runs the point, and senior Renette Antonio is the other guard.

“They have all played together for at least three seasons,” Angel said, “and their experience is our strength.”

Minus the forfeits, Bishop Montgomery has lost only five times this season--twice in the Cerritos Gahr tournament when Jones did not play, and to such ranked teams as Brea-Olinda and Fountain Valley.

The Knights squeaked into the playoffs as the No. 3 entry from the Del Rey League, but their average margin of victory in the postseason is 20 points.

“If you just look at our record, you don’t see what kind of team we are,” McGreevy said. “We want to win state, and this team is hungry. In a way them taking away our wins helped because it made us have to go out and work to prove ourselves all over again.”