Castle Park Gets Wins, but Little Respect

Ask a knowledgeable basketball fan to name San Diego County’s best high school teams and the answer most likely will be Poway and El Camino.

Morse, Serra, Sweetwater, Oceanside and perhaps Mount Carmel might also get some votes.

Then ask about Castle Park. You’ll probably be told, “You mean that team in the South Bay? Yeah, they got a great record, but they don’t play anybody.”

Castle Park (22-1) doesn’t get much respect, even though it has the county’s second-best record among boys’ teams and second-longest winning streak (13 games). Only La Jolla Country Day (22-0) can top those marks.

You won’t find the Trojans at the top of the rankings. They’re third in The Times’ Top 10 and a lot of people still think they’re overrated.

They didn’t even get the top seed in the San Diego Section 2-A playoffs which begin tonight. The Trojans, who will play host to St. Augustine at 7:30, got the No. 2 slot behind El Camino.

It’s easy to overlook the Trojans. They play in the Metro-South Bay League, easily the weakest circuit in the county. The combined record of the league’s other four teams was 20-71. Mar Vista, the league’s other playoff representative, is 7-16.

But Forest Partch, Castle Park coach, bristles when it’s suggested his team hasn’t played anybody.

“Our league wasn’t very strong,” he said, “but we played and beat every team in the Metro-Mesa (3-A) League.

“We also played a pretty good nonleague schedule and overall I think we played a very comparable schedule for a 2-A team.”

The Trojans’ conquests include:

- Sweetwater, 74-70, Metro-Mesa champion and No. 6 in the county.

- Montgomery, 72-64, Metro-Mesa runner-up and a 3-A playoff participant.

- University, 65-62, City Western League tri-champion.

- Ramona, 62-49, the third-place team in the Avocado League, but the only team in the county to beat El Camino.

The Bulldogs also defeated Oceanside, the Avocado League runner-up and No. 7 team in the county.

Ironically, Castle Park’s only loss--a 62-57 defeat to Carlsbad--came in the second game of a doubleheader the Trojans had to play in the Point Loma Tournament. They beat University earlier in the day.

Still not impressed? Partch doesn’t mind. He’ll even admit he doesn’t have the most talented team around.

“In terms of talent, I wouldn’t rank us in the top 10 teams in the county,” he said. “And that’s not to say I’m a great coach.

“It’s a tribute to the kids. We don’t have any great basketball players, but we have good athletes who are great kids. That’s what has made this season so satisfying. These guys play so well together and they work so hard.

“A team might beat us, but they’ll never outhustle us.”

The Trojans’ play a high-speed, wide-open brand of basketball. They like to run, run and then run some more. They fight and scratch every minute.

They have to. They’re very quick and have good outside shooters. But their tallest players are only 6-feet 3-inches.

“We don’t play real pretty,” Partch said. “We’re not going to execute you to death by running patterns over and over.

“We can have a beautiful fast break one time and then throw the ball away the next time. But that’s what works best for us because we’re so small.

“In games where we’ve played poorly, we’ve been able to bring the other team down to our level. Then we’d have a good spurt and pull away.”

You won’t find any of Castle Park’s players among the county’s statistical leaders. But that’s by design, Partch maintains.

“We could have easily singled out a couple of guys and gone to them all season, but I don’t think we would have been as effective,” he said. “We worked hard to have a balanced attack. That way, the other team can’t key on one guy. They have to defense five guys.”

Or, in Castle Park’s case, eight. Partch has a good bench and employs it extensively every game.

Starters--Eddie Moreno (14.5), Javier Nunez (13.7), John Stanton (11.3), Antwon Lincoln (8.9) and Steve Kane (7.5)--average a combined 55.9 points per game.

But the bench, led by Brian Cauley, Vince Bucca and David Saranglao, is worth another 20 points per game.

Still, there are those who think about what might have been.

Sweetwater starters Mahlon Williams, Sean Styles and Scott Catlin began their careers at Castle Park. So did Bonita Vista’s Kip Korzep and Poway’s sixth man, Aaron Silveyra.

“We had a lot of problems when those guys were on the team,” Saranglao said. “We weren’t together.

“The guys we have now have been friends a long time and we do a lot of things together. We’ve played together since junior high. I don’t think we would have done as well with those other guys.”

The Trojans have far exceeded Partch’s wildest expectations.

“Before each season, I write down what I think our record should be and put it in an envelope,” Partch said. “I thought a good season for this group would be 16-7.”

Now he calls Castle Park his “dream team.”

“Not because of how we match up,” Partch said, “but because these kids have done so much more than anyone expected them to.”

Castle Park hasn’t played a team with a winning record since Jan. 8 (Sweetwater) and Partch said that could hurt his club in the playoffs.

“We can do things wrong against weaker teams and get away with it, but we can’t afford to do that in the playoffs because every team is good. There are no more easy games.”

But, as the Trojans have discovered already, respect doesn’t come easy, either.