High School 2024-2025 Season Wrap-Up: Part 2 - HS National Champs
Arynn Finley of back-to-back-to-back CIF State Champion Etiwanda. Photo Courtesy of TheXShotz.
Multiple questions and more than one answer.
April 15, 2025
In this piece, the goal will be to put a wrap on the 2024-2025 high school season by covering the best teams in various categories.
I have been involved in girls’ basketball since the 1980’s and have been particularly involved with rankings issues and naming national award winners for over a decade. The 2024-2025 season will go down as one with a lot of twists and turns and to some extent leave with multiple questions with debatable answers.
Who is the number #1 team in US high school girls’ basketball?
It depends on your criteria as well as which teams can be considered. Are you doing a power rating (which weighs potential matchup and recent results more than early season results) or a true national ranking (where all results figure in more equally like in the old college football rankings of say a decade ago)? In spite of what one may read, girls’ basketball does not have a true national championship but rather a collection of resumes (like the 1950’s in football) rather than this past year with the new 12-team college football playoffs.
Power Rating: Etiwanda
If you do not weigh every game evenly and look more forward than past, California’s Open Division champs Etiwanda High School with five losses was the hot team at season’s end having beaten Ontario Christian on the third try and then finished off a weakened Archbishop Mitty which was never quite the same as before the dreaded ACL came a calling on McKenna Woliczko.
Etiwanda is the first five-loss team to be named theoretical national champion (garnering the nod from ESPN’s SC Next.)
Winning back-to-back-to-back Open Divisions in California is no easy trick. The team lost five times along the way (3 out-of-state). However, at the end of the year, Etiwanda was probably the most powerful team left standing as a state champion. The roster contained at least three (two already committed) future major division one players taking down in succession nationally ranked Mater Dei, Ontario Christian and Archbishop Mitty.
Traditional Ranking: Bishop McNamara
Here all losses count along with strength of schedule and quality wins. In a pre-season or very early season ranking, the power rating factor is large but diminishes in importance as factual results start to become more abundant.
This writer leans to one-loss Bishop McNamara [unofficial Maryland private school champion] with the best combination of results and strength of schedule. They had arguably ten top-25 wins over the course of the season.
Conclusions: If you are power rating oriented, Etiwanda would be the pick from the above perspective. From a traditional poll perspective, Bishop McNamara.
Honorable Mention Best Public School: Bradley Central (Tennessee)
Bradley Central lost only once (to Montverde Academy) while completing a threepeat in Tennessee’s large school division along with wins over several strong out of state teams including Georgia 5A champion River Ridge.
Other Publication Conclusions:
Undefeated Morris Catholic of New Jersey was the pick by MaxPreps. The team played a decent but not a great schedule. Best wins were over a weakened Archbishop Mitty (CA) at Hoophall Classic and New Jersey private powers Red Bank Catholic, St. John Vianney and Paul VI (NJ). MaxPreps ignored the unofficial loss to Sidwell Friends at The Throne.
Sports Illustrated (SI) went with Bishop McNamara out of Maryland ignoring the unofficial loss to Bishop Ireton in The Throne semifinal. As I suspected, one or more ranking services considered Throne results event though the teams did not wear school uniforms as they did in Chipotle Nationals.
Starting this season, MaxPreps did not consider non-Federation schools or non-state series Federation schools in its top 25. It was supposed to have a separate poll for schools like IMG, Montverde, and Westtown but instead they just got put into limbo. Hopefully, this will be resolved next year with a separate poll or returning to inclusion for all non-reclassifying (no 5th-year players allowed) schools. Other polls continue to include schools like IMG, Montverde and Westtown.
This year (unlike last with Long Island Lutheran’s resume of close to 10 wins over nationally ranked teams) only teams that won their last sanctioned game should have been considered. The old adage is “you cannot be the national champion without being a state champion of some kind.”