Girls’ basketball: Edison wins Division 1A title

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Things were looking grim for Huntington Beach Edison, which trailed Fullerton Troy by one point with five seconds remaining in the Southern Section Division 1A championship game at the Anaheim Convention Center. The Warriors had possession underneath their own basket, needing only to inbound the ball safely to pull off the upset.

Instead, the inbounds pass was tipped and controlled by Edison senior Bonnie Samuelson, who whirled and released an off-balance 15-foot jump shot to the left of the basket that dropped through the hoop just before the final buzzer and the top-seeded Chargers escaped with a 45-44 victory.

There were 13 ties and 14 lead changes in a tense struggle that was every bit as close as the score would indicate. In fact, Troy coaches claimed the final score was actually 44-44, believing that Edison’s Monay Lee was credited with an extra free throw with 3:56 left in the first quarter.

A Southern Section official later explained that the referees immediately checked the ‘official’ CIF scorebook, which is used to settle any discrepancies, to confirm the score at the time was correct.

Edison (29-3) led by one point going into the fourth quarter, but Alecia Dimas made a driving layup to give the second-seeded Warriors (27-4) a 44-42 lead with 1:09 left. Rilee Horton was fouled and made the second of two shots to pull Edison within a point with 48 seconds left.

Troy exhausted all but one second of the shot clock on its ensuing possession but failed to score and Edison pushed the ball up the floor as the clock ticked under 15 seconds. Samuelson missed a three-pointer with eight seconds left but Edison was not in the penalty and fouled immediately. Instead of shooting free throws at the other end, the Warriors got the ball along their own baseline, setting the stage for Samuelson’s last-second heroics.

Briana Roberson had 12 points and Shelby Doughtery added 10 for Troy, which was trying to avenge a 46-32 nonleague defeat in January. The Warriors scored the game’s first seven points, but Edison came back to tie it 10-10 at the end of the first quarter. Neither team led by more than four points the rest of the way.

Samuelson finished with a game-high 19 points and her sister Karlie Samuelson added 15 for Edison, which clung to a 38-37 lead heading into the fourth quarter. It was tied 22-22 at halftime.

-- Steve Galluzzo