City 4-A Boys : Crenshaw Goes for Its Third Straight Title Against Cleveland

The tough part about playing the Crenshaw High School Cougars, two-time defending City 4-A champions, is that they can beat you so many different ways. They can do it with their vaunted full-court press, or with the scoring of Stephen Thompson, or the inside play of Ronald Caldwell and Dion Brown.

Or, as Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell was concerned about earlier this week, they can beat a team even before the game starts.

The way Crenshaw has handled opponents for 16 years--reaching the City title game 13 times and winning 9, including 2 straight, and scoring 100 points or more in 22 of their last 48 games--does have a way of psyching a team out. And that’s before the intangibles are taken into account, such as the group of fans that used to chant, “Tell your Ma, tell your Pa--you just got beat by the Shaw!”

“We just can’t be mesmerized by their mystique and have thoughts of what has happened when a lot of other teams have played them,” Braswell said. “I talked to my team about making sure to do the things that got us here, and to make sure that no one was afraid in any way going into the game. They (the players) started laughing.”

At least Cleveland (16-7) will go into the 4-A title game against the Cougars (22-2) at 9:15 tonight at the Sports Arena even on that count. On the court, however, the Cavaliers will definitely be the underdog.

How many points should Crenshaw be favored by? Braswell said some people have been telling him to prepare for a 30-point loss. But is this the same group that told Manual Arts, cast in the same role last year, it would be the basketball equivalent of batting practice for the Cougars? That was before the Toilers turned it into a one-point game at halftime and ended losing by 11, 73-62.

The key to Cleveland’s game, as is the case when anyone plays Crenshaw, is not to beat itself. Committing too many turnovers against the press is even worse than helping to close the coffin. It’s like supplying the nails, too.

The Cougars will bring their own hammers. The Syracuse-bound Thompson, last season’s City player of the year as a junior, is averaging 34 points a game for 1985-86; Caldwell, heading to the University of Washington, is at 20.2, and Brown is averaging 13.2. Caldwell is also getting about nine rebounds an outing, second on the team to Brown’s 13. Troy Batiste leads in assists with 11.3 a game.

The record shows that Crenshaw is beatable, but no California teams have been able to prove it yet. The Cougars suffered their two losses this season in a December tournament in Myrtle Beach, S.C. Recently, they have even been playing with a couple of the cogs in the scoring machine operating at reduced efficiency. Thompson has had a cut on the middle finger of his left (shooting) hand, and Brown has had a sprained left ankle.

“We had a rash of them in the playoffs, but the team spirit is still very good,” Coach Willie West said.

At Cleveland, team spirit is one of the Cavaliers’ best weapons. This is a team, after all, that started the season 5-5, with most of the losses one-point decisions. Then, Cleveland lost star forward Trevor Wilson (25.7 points a game) with an ankle injury.

But, with a first-year coach, the senior-like play of sophomore point guard Damon Greer and the return of Wilson, they made an improbable comeback to make the final.

A win tonight would make it downright remarkable.