• 2008 Candice Wiggins 5-11 | G
• San Diego, Calif.

She led her team to two CIF state titles as a freshman and sophomore and to two CIF state title game appearances as a junior and senior. Candice scored 38 points as a sophomore in the final and since she had 31 this year, 17 as a junior and 16 as a freshman she may have scored more points in state title games (102) than anyone (boys or girls) with the exception of Terri Mann from Point Loma of San Diego.

Her versatility and skills as a defender still earned her as many votes among those we asked as were for Houston or Paris. Candice played all five positions on both offense and defense during her four years at La Jolla Country Day and excelled at all of them. It?s a player of the year honor, after all, not a scorer of the year. And while Paris had some simply overpowering rebounding and scoring outputs in big games, she did have the luxury of having her twin sister, Ashley, a great player in her own right, often feeding her the ball in a high-post, low-post alignment.

Despite missing more than four weeks of her junior season with torn cartilige in her knee and missing even more time this year with a bone bruise, Wiggins still finished with 3,252 career points, which is fourth-best on the all-time state list. Her career steals total of 776 also ranks in the top five. Some would count missed games like that as a negative, but we looked at it as if it were a positive as she worked hard and rehabbed from both injuries and wound up both the 2003 and 2004 seasons as effective as ever. If she hadn?t suffered the two injuries over the two seasons, it was calculated that Wiggins would have had a career scoring total not ahead of Houston but at No. 2 all-time and would have placed among the state?s all-time best for career three-pointers, career rebounds and career assists as well as career steals.