Yes, There Is Life After the Burges for Palos Verdes Girls : Prep basketball: Heidi and Heather Burge were tall and talented. Now they’re gone. A disaster for the Sea Kings? A 47-game league win streak says no.

The temptation for a basketball coach who is losing a couple of talented 6-foot-5 players to graduation might be to grab onto an ankle or two and hold on for dear life.

But for Palos Verdes High School Coach Wendell Yoshida, the transition to post-Heidi and Heather Burge, the team’s standout players for three years, has been a pleasant one.

For opponents, it’s been a shock.

Most observers believed that the loss of the Burge twins, two of the most highly recruited players in the country as seniors last year, would leave the Sea Kings’ program defenseless. It didn’t.

The Sea Kings have a 23-4 overall record and are ranked No. 2 in the sportswriters CIF-Southern Section 3-AA poll. Palos Verdes went undefeated in Bay League play, 13-0, captured its fourth straight league championship and extended its league winning streak to 47 games.

“People are surprised now,” Yoshida said of the Sea Kings’ continued success. “It has made believers. Palos Verdes is a legit program. We’re not an up-and-coming program anymore. This year has proven we’re not a fluke.”

The team believes that the talent was always there, with or without the twins. It just got overlooked.

Without Heidi or Heather to depend on, Palos Verdes had something to prove. The Sea Kings will get their chance when the CIF playoffs begin this week.

“All the stories and headlines that were written (predicting we’d fail) gave us extra drive,” said senior guard Lisa Humphreys. “I think we wanted to prove everyone wrong.”

Yoshida said the Burges’ departure has motivated the team to do better than last year’s team, which was expected to bring home a state championship but was eliminated in the 4-A semifinals by Katella, 56-55.

That game left behind more than disappointment. Some critics said Yoshida hadn’t kept the team focused on each game and had been looking ahead to the state final.

“We remembered what happened last year (against Katella),” senior point guard Susan Wilhite said. “Maybe we thought too far ahead last year.”

When the Sea Kings fell short last year, Yoshida asked himself the same question the critics did: How could a team with two outstandingly talented players fail? He even considered quitting.

But over the spring and summer, Palos Verdes teams continued to win, sometimes beating top-ranked teams such as Inglewood Morningside. Yoshida knew he’d still have a good lineup this year.

“The biggest thing going into this year was, number one, I didn’t know the team’s personality, and number two, I’d almost forgotten how or what the team would be like without (Heidi and Heather) in there,” Yoshida said.

In a telephone interview last week at the University of Virginia, Heidi Burge said: “I expected them to do this well.

“It seemed to me the big reason everyone was saying they’d lose this year was based on losing two players who scored 24 and 22 points (Heidi’s and Heather’s averages per game last year). That’s over half of your scoring. When you lose it, either you have to develop diversity or get stronger players.”

Diversity was the key, and Palos Verdes even may be a better team this year because its success has depended on team effort.

“Palos Verdes got stereotyped last year,” Wilhite said. “It was the twins’ team. (The rest of the team) got mentioned, but it was always the twins did this or they did that. We knew there was more to the team than the twins.

“No doubt they are excellent, but even without them, the program’s strong at Palos Verdes,” she said.

Now the Sea Kings’ success no longer depends on simply getting the ball inside. And those air-ball shots that last year ended up looking like great passes to Heidi or Heather are just bad misses this year.

“We need all five players this year,” said senior forward Mary Maloney. “We don’t depend on any one person. And we’re looking to our first CIF playoff games rather than to the state finals.”

The Sea Kings are balanced between perimeter shooting among three starting players--Humphreys, Wilhite and Maloney--and the post play of sophomore center Monique Morehouse and senior center Kristen Jaconi.

Morehouse missed nine league games with pneumonia last year, when she weighed only 130 pounds. This year she’s put 30 pounds on her 6-foot-3 frame and has averaged 12.1 points and 11.7 rebounds a game. Jaconi averages 6.5 points a game.

Humphreys leads the team in scoring with 15 points, 4.9 rebounds and 3.7 assists a game, and Wilhite averages 10.1 points, 5.6 rebounds and 3.4 assists.

At first it was hard to get away from the concept of a two-star team--especially for Wilhite, who had played with the Burges for three years. No clear leader stepped forward, and there was pressure to measure up to a high standard.

But, paradoxically, it was the unexpected loss to Katella last year that pointed the way. “When Katella beat us, they beat us as a team,” Humphreys said. “We realized that was what it would take to win this year.”

And that team attitude may be the difference between unfulfilled dreams and a state championship for the Sea Kings.