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Of the 11 No. 1 playoff seeds entering the playoffs in this week’s Far East High School Basketball Tournaments, Kadena’s girls rate as perhaps the most unlikely.

They opened the season with nine straight losses, underwent a midseason coaching change with Mike Ochoa replacing DeWayne Pigge’, then turned things around. They won nine of their next 18, including a sweep of three pool-play games in the Class AA tournament at Camp Zama, Japan.

“The chemistry of the girls,” Ochoa said when asked what has changed. “Getting along, wanting to do and having a common focus. Before, there was a little dissension, a little division, but now the girls are all looking at a common focus, which is they just want to win.”

No one person stands above anybody else on the team, Ochoa said. “It’s five to win,” he said.

Kadena’s 6-19 record entering Far East is somewhat misleading, in that most of the 19 losses came against women’s teams in the Martin Luther King Invitational Tournament and cat-quick Japanese girls teams in the Okinawa-American Shootout, each tournament held last month.

This is the second time in seven years that Kadena has made an in-season coaching change, each time for undisclosed reasons.

Coincidentally, the last time the Panthers made an in-season coaching change, in 2003, they won the Class AA title. “We’re looking forward to at least having a decent showing,” Ochoa said. “It gets a little tougher from now on.”

St. Mary’s boys highly motivated

Riding a tide of emotion into the Boys Class AA playoffs is defending champion St. Mary’s International. Their coach last year, Fred Sava, died of brain cancer five weeks ago. They wear T-shirts that say, “Playing hard for coach Sava” and break their huddles shouting “Sava!”

“It’s an amazing feeling,” senior guard Toni Taniguchi said after the Titans’ 40-37 last-second victory over pre-tournament favorite Kadena.

“This was definitely for Coach. I think we definitely have the potential to win this whole thing. That game showed it. Our discipline paid off and that’s what going to get us to the top again.”

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