THE REMATCH : Four Semifinals in Southern CIF Playoffs Feature Teams That Have Settled One Score Against the Other This Year

Offense sells tickets but defense wins championships.

Three things can happen when you put the football in the air and only one of them is good.

You drop back on an average passer but pressure a good one.

Welcome to the world of football adages, where such words of wisdom have been preached by coaches since the days of Knute Rockne and Red Grange.

And around this time of year, with high school football playoffs in full swing, another adage usually creeps into conversation.

In football rematches, the team that lost the first game has the advantage in the second game.

With four of the six semifinals in the CIF Southern Section Big Five Conference, Southern Conference and Central Conference being rematches, those words have been thrown around a lot this week.

Edison plays Westminster tonight in LeBard Stadium. In the first week of the Sunset League season, the Lions beat the Chargers, 24-14.

La Habra plays Saddleback tonight at La Habra Stadium. In the third week of the regular season, the Roadrunners whipped the Highlanders, 34-0.

Santa Ana plays El Modena tonight at Santa Ana Stadium. Five weeks ago, in Century League play, the Vanguards dumped the Saints, 24-7.

And Saturday night, South Coast League rivals El Toro and Mission Viejo will go at it again in LeBard Stadium. The Chargers won the first contest, 24-17, four weeks ago.

The reasoning behind the ol’ rematch adage is that the team that lost the first game will have more incentive to regain what it lost, and that the team that won might enter the rematch complacent or overconfident.

But do coaches really buy it?

That all depends on who you’re asking.

“Most people make trends up,” Santa Ana Coach Dick Hill said. “They don’t always work out.”

Said El Modena Coach Bob Lester: “I’m not worried about complacency at all.”

Added Saddleback Coach Jerry Witte: “They (La Habra) are just a team we have to defeat to go to the finals. It doesn’t matter who it is. We have a goal like they do--to get into the finals--and each team is in the other’s way.”

In the past five years, including this year, there have been eight rematches involving Orange County teams in the playoffs. In five of those eight, the team that won the first game won again.

In two of the more memorable turnarounds, though, Servite came back to defeat Bishop Amat, 28-10, in the 1983 Big Five final after losing to the Lancers, 21-13, in the regular season, and Sunny Hills avenged a 14-12 loss to La Habra in the regular season by defeating the Highlanders, 29-0, in the 1983 Central Conference championship game.

These are the kinds of scenarios that worry El Toro Coach Bob Johnson.

‘ ‘This is un-American here--we’re not suppose to be doing this twice a year,” he said. “With Mission Viejo losing the first time, it certainly gives them real incentive to come back and make up for what they didn’t do the last time. In an even match like this, I think it’s easier for them to psych up.”

But, on the other hand, the Chargers already have beaten the Diablos, and the El Toro players know that they’re capable of doing it again.

This is what worries Mission Viejo Coach Bill Crow, who has played a game of mental hopscotch with his players this week.

“A lot of people said that we have the advantage and the kids were starting to believe that,” Crow said. “The feeling throughout last weekend was that, ‘Oh boy, we’ve got it made now.’ But I talked to the kids Monday and told them the other side, that El Toro won the first one and they believe they can beat us again.

“I’ve told my kids that all that psychological stuff doesn’t block and tackle for you. We’ve tried to instill the idea that in football, you rarely get a second chance, so we’re just happy to be able to play them again.”

Witte has played down the rematch aspect with his players, but he did admit he’d rather not play anyone twice in the same season, especially after defeating that opponent by such a lopsided score the first time.

“Dealing with emotions is an important part of the football game,” Witte said. “Here, you have the factor of revenge. La Habra will be trying to prove something.”

Bab Rau, La Habra coach, begs to differ.

“I’m not a vengeance-type coach, and I’ve never been one for psychological games,” he said. “That was a practice game for us, and we just looked at it for the mistakes we made and have to improve on. I don’t anticipate Saddleback coming up here overconfident or not ready to play. It would be nice . . . but I don’t think it will happen.”

Neither does Witte.

“I think the kids have a short memory,” he said. “They live from day to day and for the future. The past is not something they dwell on a lot. I don’t think the last game will enter into it--unless we lose.”

Introducing the embarrassment factor.

There is pressure on the Saddleback players to win because they should win. Look at what happened the first time they played La Habra. Anything less than another lopsided victory would seem suspicious to Roadrunner fans.

The same thing goes for El Modena, which easily defeated Santa Ana the first time around. How does Bob Lester convince his team that tonight’s game won’t be another pushover?

“I’ve told them Santa Ana has improved, but I did it with a grain of salt,” Lester said. “You can say how wonderful they are, but we’re not really concerned with that. We just want to play them. They have improved, but so have we.”

Lester hasn’t dwelt too much on the first game. Instead, he has stressed to his players that they have a chance to become the first team to win three consecutive championships since the Southern Section adopted the conference format for its playoffs in 1977--and that they must defeat Santa Ana to even have a chance at accomplishing such a feat.

“I don’t care who we’re playing or when, but there’s a magic figure before our eyes and that’s 3,” Lester said. “That’s really what I’m pushing now. It’s easy for us to get fired up. This is big time for them, for all of us. It’s the ultimate.”

Bill Workman, Edison coach, doesn’t think the revenge motive outweighs the incentive of playing in the Big Five Conference championship game.

“We lost, and everyone wants to turn around that loss, but the most important thing is that this is the semifinals and everyone wants to get to the finals,” Workman said. “We’ve met teams we’ve beaten in the regular season and beaten again in the playoffs, and we’ve met teams we’ve beaten in the regular season and lost to in the playoffs. Quite frankly, this is just another football game.”

Westminster Co-Coach Jim O’Hara’s sentiments, exactly.

“With the stakes what they are, no one will go in overconfident or at an emotional disadvantage because they won or lost the first game,” he said.

“We beat Edison, but we also remind our kids that Marina beat us and Edison thrashed Marina (51-14). They realize that each time we go out to play, it’s a different ballgame. We’re not using anything from that first game to prepare for this game.”