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  • Pacifica coach David Mamelli suggests senior Taylor Ivicevic can start...

    Pacifica coach David Mamelli suggests senior Taylor Ivicevic can start for Orange County's perennial powers. She averages 14 points per game.

  • Pacifica senior Taylor Ivicevic began starting on varsity shortly after...

    Pacifica senior Taylor Ivicevic began starting on varsity shortly after her first appearance her sophomore year.

  • Pacifica High senior Taylor Ivicevic is being recruited by a...

    Pacifica High senior Taylor Ivicevic is being recruited by a handful of college programs, including La Sierra University.

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Date shot: 12/31/2012 . Photo by KATE LUCAS /  ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Ruby Rivera is a returning point guard for first-year coach David Mamelli’s Pacifica High Mariners, but Taylor Ivicevic doesn’t scare easy.

The year is 2011, Ivicevic’s freshman year, and Rivera, a junior, is the school’s premier female athlete. By her senior year, Rivera will be swimming in Division I softball scholarships, a pool of potential destinations from which she’ll ultimately choose the University of Illinois. She’s better at basketball, her secondary sport, than most kids are at their primary sport.

Ivicevic, meanwhile, is a 5-foot-2 softball transplant, attempting to latch onto a varsity spot despite her basketball inexperience. Rivera, funny enough, has been assigned to be Ivicevic’s Mariners Mentor – the school’s buddy program for incoming freshman.

Mamelli sees Ivicevic giving Rivera all she can handle during intersquad summer practices. She’s running his star point guard ragged.

This girl Ivicevic has quite a future, he says.

“She had the desire in her, even as a freshman, to go against the best people she could,” Mamelli said, three years later. “Now, some of the younger girls want to go against Taylor. She’s what most college coaches are looking for; her drive never stops, her effort and energy are always at their highest. She’s the perfect candidate for a college program. Any college that gets her is going to love her.”

Mamelli holds “optional” Saturday workouts every weekend during the season. They’re optional in name only, with each year’s senior class requiring teammates to attend, if only for a few minutes. Any work is good work. Ivicevic has attended every Saturday workout since her freshman year.

“Basketball is a game of IQ,” she said. “You have to know what’s going to happen next.”

Ivicevic, 17, is the daughter of an elementary school teacher and a professional photographer; her basketball chops are the product of growing up with an older brother who schooled her every chance he got. The Ivicevic kids played seven years of baseball together, including a few travel seasons, before Taylor concluded her childhood with three years of softball.

Basketball typically filled the months between seasons. “For fun,” she said. “Nothing serious.”

Ivicevic planned on continuing her softball career in high school, then fell for basketball her freshman year. She broke her ankle in 2012, cutting her first high school season short. Mamelli believed the injury would compromise Ivicevic’s speed, which wasn’t outstanding to begin with. He stashed her on his junior varsity roster the following summer.

“We just didn’t need her,” the coach recalled of his varsity squad. “We had enough depth at the guard position, but she did a phenomenal job in offseason practices. The leap from her freshman year to her sophomore year was so vast. I still ask myself, ‘How did we not have her on varsity from the start?’”

Following offseason surgery, Ivicevic showed no ill-effects from the injury and actually returned to the court a faster, shiftier guard. She’d also grown a few inches, making her a viable varsity rotation player. When one of Mamelli’s point guards quit early in the 2012-13 season, the coach called upon his talented, if incredibly green, sophomore.

Ivicevic earned a starting spot – beside Rivera, a senior at the time – shortly thereafter.

Ivicevic averaged five points per game that winter for a Mariners team that finished 12-15, Mamelli’s second consecutive playoff troupe. Ivicevic’s defensive effort was unparallelled, Mamelli recalled. The perfect off guard for Pacifica’s full-court pressure scheme.

The coach charts what he calls “effort plays.” Ivicevic hoarded those.

Pacifica improved by four wins last season, appearing in the postseason a third straight year. Ivicevic came into her own in 2014, averaging 14 points per game in 28 games played.

In a recent fall league scrimmage against Mater Dei High, Orange County’s premier girls basketball program, Mamelli recalled seeing longtime Monarchs coach Kevin Kiernan in his huddle, pointing at Ivicevic, telling his team, She’s the girl.

“I never see myself as a top player,” Ivicevic said. “I just want to get there.”

Mamelli believes Ivicevic could start for Mater Dei, for Brea Olinda High, for Troy High. Those are the county’s perennial powers, loaded with Division I, II and III prospects at every position.

“There’s no doubt she could play with them,” he said.

Ivicevic is inherently introverted, a silent leader. Mamelli told her in the summer that leading this year’s team would require her to step outside her comfort zone. Ivicevic’s effort on the court has always done the talking, but her responsibilities as a senior captain require more than simply leading by example.

She’s working on finding her voice.

“I’m always watching my teammates,” she said. “Now I’m trying to vocalize what I see.”

Ivicevic is Mamelli’s primary ball handler. She shoots threes remarkably well, and has a penchant for getting to the free throw line. Against Mission Viejo High earlier this season, Ivicevic went 18 for 20 from the charity stripe and finished with 23 points. Ivicevic is fearless driving to the basket and built physically for contact.

La Sierra University, Hollins University in Virginia and The College of Wooster in Ohio are actively recruiting Ivicevic, whose made every adjustment the past three years with “an eye toward playing in college.”

“She has the ambition to be as good as she can possibly be,” Mamelli said. “She absolutely knows it takes work to be good. We have higher expectations for her than others because of that, because of her knowledge of the game.”

Contact the writer: 714-704-3790 or bwhitehead@ocregister.com