Prep Notebook : Agoura Would Like to Prove It’s a Different Sort of .500 Team

Agoura High’s opponents in the basketball playoffs could be excused for taking the Chargers lightly.

“There’s no question people looked at us that way,” Agoura Coach Bob LaBelle said. “They see 11-11 and say, ‘Holy cow, we should kill those guys.’ ”

But, as Glenn, Cabrillo and Temple City have discovered, Agoura is no ordinary 11-11 team.

The Chargers, who split their 22 regular season games, enter tonight’s Southern Section 2-A semifinal game at Westlake High against top-ranked Santa Clara as underdogs.

Santa Clara, which is located in Oxnard, is 25-3 overall and defeated Agoura twice--67-50 and 74-58--in Frontier League play.

But, warned LaBelle, “Our kids aren’t intimidated.”

Three straight playoff upsets have a way of making a team confident.

The Chargers traveled to Norwalk for their playoff opener against Suburban League champion Glenn and came away with a 55-48 win.

Agoura then defeated fourth-seeded Cabrillo, 54-53, in overtime to reach the quarterfinals. The Chargers improved to 14-11 with their 47-38 victory over Temple City in San Marino last Friday.

And now, Agoura is one win away from playing at the Long Beach Arena.

“The season has been a success,” LaBelle said, “but it’ll be more a lot more successful if we beat Santa Clara and go to the finals. The kids won’t be satisfied to just get there (to the semifinals) and lose. They want to keep going.”

Agoura’s record somewhat is deceptive in that the team was 3-7 in December. The Chargers were still adjusting to a match-up zone defensive scheme that LaBelle implemented this season. At the time, two of their starters, Steve Armstrong and Donnie Rea, were leading the Agoura football team to the Desert-Mountain Conference championship.

Armstrong and Rea missed the basketball team’s first seven games. It wasn’t until after the Christmas vacation that the football stars began making an impact on the wooden floor.

During the break, LaBelle gave his team eight days off, something he had never done in the past. The players were tired emotionally and physically. During the halftime of one game, Armstrong passed out.

“The kids came back from the break really strong,” LaBelle said. “They were rested.”

And ready to go.

The Chargers are 11-4 since January, their only losses coming in league to Santa Clara and Nordhoff. Agoura and Nordhoff, which plays El Monte in the other 2-A semifinal game, both went 4-4 in league.

With the team finally put together, the match-up zone--a mixture of man-to-man and zone principles--began to work.

“It has been extremely successful,” LaBelle said, noting the low scores of Agoura’s playoff games. “We couldn’t adjust before. The kids would say, ‘Oh hell, I didn’t know that would happen.’ Now, they’re adjusting to it.”

Besides the zone, another factor that has benefited the Chargers is the mere presence of Armstrong and Rea.

“The winning attitude of football has carried over,” the coach said. “It’s there.”

Armstrong was the starting quarterback and Rea the starting tight end for the 14-0 football team.

Armstrong, a starting guard, is second on the team in scoring, averaging 15.4 points a game. The leader at 17.9 points an outing is Mike Corridori, a senior forward.

Rea, a junior, is the other starting forward, while senior Gary Florentine is the starting center. Tom Brown, a junior, is the other starting guard.

“The school has had a taste of what it’s like to win,” LaBelle said, alluding to the Southern Section championship in football. “They want that again.”

The soccer match between Crespi and Burbank wasn’t the only Crespi sporting event to involve a fight Friday.

After Alfie Basile’s last-second shot had missed and Serra’s 57-56 win over Crespi in the Southern Section 5-A quarterfinals was secure, the Cavaliers began celebrating.

That celebration was dampened somewhat when Serra’s Darryl May and Crespi’s Jon Kirchner squared off as if ready to fight after May had taken the rebound of Basile’s shot away from Kirchner.

A fan from Serra’s side of the gym tackled Kirchner from behind, setting off a minor melee as fans from both sides poured onto the court.

Order was quickly restored, however, and Serra’s celebration continued as the Crespi players retreated to the locker room for a 30-minute talk with Coach Paul Muff.

Crespi’s 2-1 win over Burbank in the soccer quarterfinals was called with two minutes left in the second overtime. A brawl emptied both benches and involved several of the 300 spectators at Burbank.

How bad did it get for Kennedy in the girls’ City 4-A championship basketball game Friday?

Only five times during the 47-38 loss to Locke did the Golden Cougars score on two straight possessions.

Each time Kennedy was on the verge of making a run, it turned the ball over. The Golden Cougars suffered 29 turnovers and shot just 35%.

“Oh my God, the turnovers,” Kennedy Coach Craig Raub said afterward. “It was the little things, traveling calls, losing the ball off our hands, throwing away inbounds passes.

“We just never got the offense going.”

But with four starters returning next season, the Golden Cougars should be favored to return to Sports Arena.

Said Raub: “You can bet we’ll come back.”

Add Kennedy: One of the Golden Cougars’ top players next year will be Diane DeCree. The 6-0 sophomore was Kennedy’s second-leading scorer this season and scored 16 points in the title game.

DeCree was a first-team all-tournament selection for the playoffs. The man who announced the team to the Sports Arena crowd had as much trouble with DeCree’s name as Kennedy did with its offense.

He called her “Dana” instead of Diane. He was, however, just warming up. While introducing the boys’ all-tournament team later that night, he called Crenshaw’s Dion Brown “Don,” and Fairfax’s Sean Higgins “Seen.”