Prep Review : Saddleback Is Having Problems Living Up to Great Expectations

On the surface, Saddleback High School’s basketball team is the envy of Orange County.

“I’d love to have those guys,” said El Toro Coach Tim Travers, possibly acting as spokesman for 55 of 56 other Orange County coaches--not including Mater Dei’s.

The Roadrunners are a rangy, swift group of sweet shooters, the best to set foot on the court in school history. At Saddleback, the Santa Ana school whose name is synonymous with academics, that never used to be saying much, however.

One telling example: In past seasons, Coach Pat Quinn, a 6-6 former player at Western High and Southern California College, usually dwarfed his entire team.

Winters used to be cheerless around Saddleback. The Roadrunners had no players taller than 6 feet for several years, and they won only 6 of their 43 games between fall 1981 and spring 1983.

No Saddleback basketball team ever managed to qualify for the playoffs, although not for a lack of trying. The school has competed in seven different leagues over the past 17 years.

But its current batch of angular students were clearly destined for more than reaching books on the top shelves of the library. Nobody needed Quinn’s algebra course to grasp the importance of these numbers: 6-9, 6-7 and 6-5.

Those figures helped add up to a 19-6 finish last year and the school’s first playoff appearance.

“It’s great to have to look up at my players again,” Quinn said, delighted.

In the wake of the second-place finish in the Sea View League, Saddleback’s opponents were awed, the sportswriters were shocked, and even the rooters were temporarily stupefied. The team’s reputation ballooned--perhaps out of proportion.

The subject of unflattering comparisons for almost two decades, suddenly Saddleback was being mentioned in the same breath as Mater Dei.

After all, wasn’t this the team that lit up a respectable El Toro defense for 61 points in one half last month?

Didn’t this team have three players virtually manufactured to Division 1 college specifications?

Ever seen guys--zip--that fast? Or--gasp--that tall? Or--swish--that accurate?

“Everyone expects us to be able to blow Mater Dei out by 20,” Quinn said.

You could almost have predicted the result of that hype. Although three starters and a 6-9 sub returned, Saddleback found last year’s act hard to follow.

In the first month of this season, the Roadrunners exposed their mortality with some loafing on defense, a mild case of team dissension over Christmas vacation, and four losses in 12 games.

In a matter of weeks they were written off as “the biggest disappointment of the young season” in one newspaper story.

At the heart of the criticisms is the observation that the team appears to be blessed with more ability than it consistently chooses to use.

“If they played to their potential, I believe they have as much talent as anybody in the county,” Travers, the El Toro coach, said. “I’ve seen them play a lot, and I always thought they played soft. They tend to glide and just be there. They didn’t seem to play with any intensity and emotion . . . But I think Quinn is doing an excellent job in a difficult position.”

Travers said the Roadrunners looked “kind of lethargic” and “passive” in the first half of their Dec. 19 Irvine Tournament game. El Toro, using the let-sleeping-giants-lie philosophy, built a 34-18 halftime lead.

But Saddleback roused itself from its slumber to play hard in the second half, a difference of “night and day,” Travers said.

“I told our guys we couldn’t let them make any play that would get them excited,” he said. “But in the second half, they played with great emotion, great passion. They were awesome. They out-athleted us.”

Remember the way the Roadrunner preferred to travel in Saturday morning cartoons? Those same startling 0-to-60 accelerations and unpredictable screeching stops now seem to characterize the team that bears the name.

“They tend to play in little spurts,” observed El Modena Coach Bill Ervin, whose team beat Saddleback, 61-51, in the Orange Tournament opener. “They’d score six or eight straight points, and then not score at all on the next five or six times down the court.

“Defense was their biggest weakness. It looked like they were waiting for offense. They didn’t sag in or get out and apply pressure. We were able to run our offense until we got some good shots.

“I’d say in the entire game, they played about a minute and a half of intense defense. They were causing turnovers and scoring points, and doing an excellent job.

“So we called time out, and they never went back to that. They never came after us any more. I was afraid they were going to stay at it. But they didn’t.”

Quinn borrows an explanation from University of Nevada Las Vegas Coach Jerry Tarkanian: “We work on defense 90% of the time, but you would never know it by watching us (in games) . . . (The players’) offense has been so spectacular ever since grade school that it’s No. 1 and defense is No. 2.”

No one on the team claims the Roadrunners are playing the type of defense of which they are capable, but the players say they hope it will come around.

“We need to get more intense,” said senior Mark Walton, who has already signed a letter of intent to attend St. Mary’s College, a West Coast Athletic Conference school in Moraga, Calif. “We want to play intense, but it’s hard. We have a lot of guys who act cool.

“We’re a finesse team. The only power player we have is (6-3 forward) Joe Deal. Sometimes we’re lackadaisical and it seems like we’re tired.”

Part of that problem may be a lack of depth. The talent, experience and confidence drops off sharply after the starting five, and Quinn substitutes very sparingly. Some Roadrunner box scores in December reflected scoring from just four players.

When a team relies on a handful of players, absences become crucial.

Rumors flew during Christmas vacation when 6-9 senior Chance Peterson, who has accepted a scholarship to the University of Montana, returned late from visiting relatives in Northern California. He arrived in street clothes during the fourth quarter of the El Modena game, just in time to see the Roadrunners lose. Quinn said Peterson’s plane got fogged in at San Francisco.

Point guard Earl Jones, a vital part of the team for his playmaking and defense, missed two Orange Tournament games, including the 74-61 loss to Foothill in the consolation semifinals. Quinn said Jones had “transportation problems” between Santa Ana and Orange.

Another source of speculation was Quinn’s benching of junior guard Bryant Walton, considered the team’s finest shooter, during the first half of the El Toro game. Quinn would only say that the punishment stemmed from Walton’s failure to follow instructions.

Even with the full cast present, the team still seems to lack two things--a classic center and a genuine leader. Neither Peterson nor Mark Walton (6-7) provides a rugged presence under the basket, leaving that up to Deal, whose height can be a great disadvantage.

Peterson, his size and college scholarship notwithstanding, is one of the Roadrunners’ least seasoned players. He started only two games last year, and averaged only five points and three rebounds for the season coming off the bench.

When the Roadrunners are faltering, they play like five individuals, rather than as a team.

“Individually, I think we’re accomplishing a lot, but sometimes at the expense of being a team,” Quinn said. “When the buzzer goes off, we have to pull together.”

Some the Roadrunners’ leaderless quality may relate to the personalities of the players, whom Quinn describes as “very quiet, shy and inward.”

“The hyperactive, most-inspirational-player type isn’t around this year,” Quinn said. “. . . We’re not a close-knit group (socially). We’ve got 10 different guys and probably 10 different groups.”

Said Deal: “That is a small factor. Off the court, we’re 10 different individuals, but we have a common goal.

“Our team hasn’t given its best effort, 100%, in the preseason. But some people don’t get inspired to do that until league. League is what we worked all spring for, league is what we worked all summer for, and until we get into league, nobody can tell our potential and whether we are going to get it together.”

The Roadrunners, who won their first three Sea View games in overtime last season, beat Costa Mesa, 54-53, Friday in their 1985 opener.