Section 7 girls basketball results: Windward wins top division as California teams dominate

Section 7 girls basketball results: Windward wins top division as California teams dominate originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

As expected, the last round of Section 7's City of Mesa bracket featured a matchup between recent high school girls basketball national champions Etiwanda – the event's three-time reigning champion – and Ontario Christian.

Advertisement

Except it was for third place instead of first.

At the same time Ontario Christian rolled past Etiwanda 75-49 for the bronze, Section 7's top division concluded with one of the tournament's relative underdogs – Windward – defeating four-time reigning NorCal champion Archbishop Mitty 54-46 for the title. Windward had unseated Etiwanda 69-65 in the previous round after starting with a 57-51 win over Nevada powerhouse Democracy Prep Agassi Campus and a 66-58 victory against Arizona champion Millennium. Mitty made it to the finals by beating Eagle (ID) 53-44, defeating Mater Dei 67-56, and notching a 56-48 win over Ontario Christian, which beat the Monarchs 56-49 in the CIF Open Division state finals in March.

The Wildcats are led by one of the nation's premier perimeter units: 5-star junior wing Amel Cook, 4-star senior guard Charis Rainey, Princeton-bound senior combo guard Angelina Habis, who helped Harvard-Westlake win a state crown as a freshman, and six-foot-one junior Alexie Wehrle, a versatile playmaking wing/forward. They're coming off an injury-riddled 18-14 season in which they uncharacteristically finished ranked outside California's top 25. That's because Cook missed the entire season and Habis missed more than half of it between the transfer sit-out period and an injury. But Windward's core is at full-strength now, and it made the most of an opportunity to show what it can do on a national stage when healthy. That's why SN ranked the Wildcats No. 13 in the country in our way-too-early 2026-27 national rankings earlier this spring.

Windward has been nationally prominent – and even a serious national title contender – for much of the last 20 years or more. It was most recently on the national radar during the 2020-21 season when Juju Watkins was a sophomore – her second and last season as a Wildcat. The next few years were marked by a rebuilding phase and multiple head coaching changes, which proved that a rebuilding phase by Windward's lofty standards meant still competing for CIF-SS Open Division selections and Division I state titles.

Advertisement

But this tournament signifies an unsurprising return to national relevance for the program. It also proved that a lack of player availability was the only thing holding Windward back from competing at the highest level in 2025-26. And it means the Wildcats are catching absolutely nobody by surprise in 2026-27. Nobody on the West Coast, at least.

The rest of the City of Mesa division consisted of nothing but heavyweights, most of which have been nationally ranked in the past two years. The other teams were Utah champion Pleasant Grove, Nevada champion Bishop Gorman, CIF-SDS Open Division champion Francis Parker, Idaho champion Eagle, Arizona runner-up O'Connor, Tualatin (OR), Mandan (ND), Campo Verde (AZ), and perennial Utah stalwart Lone Peak.

California's dominance extended to the No. 2 division as well, as Saint Joseph (Lakewood) took down fellow Southern Section Open Division selection Oak Park for the Delano Family title. La Jolla Country Day clamped its way to the finals in the John Dawson Foundation bracket where the Torreys were clamped 56-42 themselves by Standley Lake of Colorado.

Utah teams dominate the tournament's middle divisions. Ridgeline won the OrthoArizona bracket with a 57-33 rout of Colorado heavyweight Denver East, Cedar Valley steamrolled its way to an AIA bracket championship, and Snow Canyon edged out Mountain Ridge in the SLAM Grafix title tilt. Finally, Arizona's Canyon View and Casteel won the ABCA and ASEC brackets, respectively.