Preps / Scott Howard-Cooper : Crenshaw Sees Bottom Fall Out of Its Season

Football Coach David Frierson of Crenshaw High School was wearing an empty look Monday as he sat on a sideline bench at Hamilton High. He stared into the distance, his back was hunched and he no doubt was wondering what had hit his Cougars. Talk about the one that got away.

Four months of playing and practicing had been wiped out in about 30 minutes. Sixteen plays to be exact. Prep football’s version of professional wrestling, that’s what the California tiebreaker is.

It’s very confining. Eight plays on offense and that’s it. No fourth-quarter comebacks here.

Very final, too. As in loser leaves town.

“It’s four downs for your life,” said former Orange El Modena Coach Bob Lester, the local expert on the California tiebreaker system, referring to the old formula. “The problem is, four downs are not going to signify which team is better.”

In an entire game Oct. 24, in the middle of the Pacific League schedule, Crenshaw was better than Gardena, 15-0. That gave the much-improved Cougars a 4-2 record, with wins over Granada Hills Kennedy and San Fernando and a pair of nothing-to-be-ashamed of losses to Reseda Cleveland and Carson.

In 16 plays Monday, Gardena was the better team and won, 6-0. The Mohicans (2-7 overall, 2-3 in league play), will go to the City 4-A playoffs to play Granada Hills, a 54-6 winner when the teams met in the regular season. Crenshaw (5-4, 2-3) will leave town, so to speak, until next year.

“You can’t really get prepared to play this way,” Frierson said. “There’s the pressure. And first they insisted that we get four plays (the old rule) and then they say we get eight. So, the only thing is, you have eight plays to get (fired up). Period.”

Said Gardena sophomore running back Khybdeed Hairston, who bolted up the middle and broke several tackles from 26 yards out on the Mohicans’ fourth play for the only score: “We were really worried. We didn’t want to be in this type of predicament.”

The rules have changed some in the last few years, but the latest way to determine which of two tied teams makes the playoffs is to put the ball on the 50 and have the teams alternate possessions, no matter what happened the play before. Constant shuttling, no clock, plenty of strategy and extreme importance on each play, for if no one scores, the team in opposition territory after 16 plays wins. Even the 49.

“Everything is the same as during the game, but you just have to pick the best plays,” Gardena Coach Dale Hirayama said.

Everything?

“Well,” Lester said, “the first thing that comes to mind is that the athletic director gets (angry) because all that tape is used for maybe only four downs.”

Lester knows more about the California tiebreaker than maybe he even cares to. He has seen it go against El Modena twice, once in the 1982 Southern Conference final at Anaheim Stadium. It is remembered as one of the great area high school football games and was also the main reason officials changed the rule to have a tie in a championship game instead of a sudden-death overtime.

It went into the third overtime possession before Santa Ana Foothill won, 35-28, after being tied at the end of regulation, 14-14.

Another time, Loyola and Fountain Valley played to a tie in the second round of the 1977 Big Five playoffs. Neither scored in the first overtime. Loyola got the ball and scored on its next possession. Fountain Valley answered with a touchdown, attempted the extra point to tie it, 21-21 . . . and missed. The kick hit the crossbar and bounced away.

Better luck next year.

Guard David Whitmore of Playa del Rey St. Bernard, one of the top basketball prospects on the West Coast, has changed his mind about waiting until April and will sign a letter of intent today with Georgia Tech.

“I like it that the ACC has so much talent,” Whitmore said Monday night. “Plus, the city of Atlanta is so nice. It’s kind of like L.A. I see a good opportunity there for me.

“It was a question of staying close to home so that my mother could see me or going somewhere I could play a lot of have some exposure.”

Whitmore, who had USC among his final choices, will practice with St. Bernard for the first time today after recovering from a fractured right foot. The Vikings have been working out as a team since Nov. 10.

Coach Eddie Sutton’s great recruiting job this year at the University of Kentucky, which included signing standout forward LeRon Ellis of Santa Ana Mater Dei, is not without its drawbacks. Then again, what coach wouldn’t like to have this problem?

The Wildcats, getting by now with eight players, originally would have had 16 players on scholarship next year, one over the limit.

But that increased by one last Friday, when Sutton added recruit No. 6 of the early signing period, 6-foot-7 forward Deron Feldhaus from Maysville, Ky. The Wildcats are still looking at 6-5 swingman Jerome Harmon from Gary, Ind. But Harmon’s coach, Earl Smith, has said that interest in Kentucky has been hurt with the signing of 6-6 guard Eric Manuel. Sean Higgins of Fairfax dropped the Wildcats from consideration for that very reason.

Reports from Lexington are that recruit Sean Sutton, the coach’s son, may become a walk-on, which would help the situation. Whatever, Eddie Sutton doesn’t seem concerned with the situation, or at least isn’t letting on if he is.

“Those things have a tendency of working out for the best,” he told John Clay of the Lexington Herald-Leader last week. “We don’t have to worry about that until school opens in the fall. The numbers mean nothing until school opens.”

Prep Notes Quarterback Jim Bonds of Newhall Hart, The Times’ eighth-ranked team in the Southern Section, goes into Friday night’s Northwestern Conference playoff opener against Arroyo Grande having thrown for 300 yards or more in three straight games. In that span, he has completed 59 of 75 passes for 966 yards and 15 touchdowns. . . . Melissa Sutton of Newbury Park has won the Southern Section girls’ 4-A cross-country championship three times, not two as reported Sunday. Also, Bryan Gibby was the top finisher for Thousand Oaks, not John Rogers.

Times’ Top 10 final SOUTHERN SECTION No. School, League Record 1. Bishop Amat, Angelus 10-0-0 2. El Toro, South Coast 10-0-0 3. St. John Bosco, Del Rey 10-0-0 4. Muir, Pacific 10-0-0 5. Santa Ana, Century 9-1-0 6. Crespi, Del Rey 9-1-0 7. CC Canyon, Golden 9-1-0 8. Hart, Foothill 9-1-0 9. Fontana, Citrus Belt 9-1-0 10.Loyola, Del Rey 8-2-0 CITY No. School, League Record 1. Banning, Pacific 9-0-0 2. Carson, Pacific 8-1-0 3. Granada Hills, Valley 8-0-1 4. Kennedy, Valley 5-3-1 5. Cleveland, Valley 7-2-0 6. Dorsey, Pacific 5-6-0 7. Crenshaw, Pacific 5-4-0 8. Manual Arts, Crosstown 6-2-0 9. University, Pac-8 8-1-0 10. Franklin, Freeway 7-2-0