Katya Echavez scores 18 to lead Walnut: In a Hacienda League opener, the Walnut High girls basketball team defeated West Covina 44-38 Wednesday night behind an 18-point performance from senior forward Katya Echavez.
In the first minute of the fourth quarter, Echavez led the Mustangs (9-4, 1-0) on a quick 6-0 run that gave them a comfortable 39-29 lead. In that minute, Echavez had three steals, a pair of field goals and assisted a jumper by Brittany Yee, who finished the game with 13 points.
The Walnut defense held West Covina (11-6, 0-1) scoreless through the first 3 1/2 minutes of the fourth quarter, pushing the lead as high as 12, which West Covina never overcame. The Bulldogs did get the deficit down to as little as five, but another long jumper by Yee in the final two minutes put the game out of reach.

South Hills shows why it’s the Trib’s No. 1 team: Playing like the top-ranked girls basketball team in the San Gabriel Valley, South Hills jumped on top early and ran off to an easy 61-34 win over Bonita in a Palomares League game on Wednesday night.
Senior Brittany Wang scored 14 first-quarter points as the Huskies (14-4, 2-0) took a 20-6 lead after the first eight minutes and never looked back.
“We hadn’t beaten them in five years and we worked hard for it,” Wang said. “They were favored and we just wanted to let them know we were a good team.”
Wang finished with a game-high 29 points, including five 3-pointers, as the Huskies won their eighth consecutive game, including the championship of the Santiago Garden Grove Tournament.
The Bearcats (9-10,1-1) had trouble solving the Huskies’ pressing defense as Wang, Joy Krupa and Sam Perez forced turnovers.

Arroyo Valley, the team that won 161-2, only won 80-19 in next game without its coach, who was serving the first of a two-game suspension for their 159-point victory: It didn’t have its coach, but that didn’t prove to be a problem for the Arroyo Valley High girls basketball team.
In the Hawks’ first game since a triple-digit blowout of Bloomington last week, Arroyo Valley jumped out to a 19-point lead after a quarter and never looked back. Arroyo Valley routed Indian Springs 80-19 in the San Andreas League opener for both schools at Indian Springs High.
In fact, it was Indian Springs’ first-ever league girls basketball game.