Mustangs With a Surprising Kick : Trabuco Hills’ 13-2 Basketball Start Catches Many Off Guard

There are more than a few high school basketball teams more talented than Trabuco Hills, but it might take a while to find one as well-connected.

The Mustangs, in only their second year of existence, may be the surprise of the season. They are 13-2 and ranked seventh in the latest Southern Section 2-A ratings. But their success isn’t surprising to the players, who credit a summer basketball camp as the turning point in the program.

Coach Butch Taylor wanted to give his team an opportunity to gain experience last summer by sending them to a friend’s camp.

Taylor’s friend just happened to be Arizona basketball Coach Lute Olson. They became close friends when Olson was coaching at Marina High School and Taylor was an assistant at Long Beach Wilson in the late 1960s.

Once at the camp, the Trabuco Hills players competed against teams from Arizona, Nevada and New Mexico. Taylor also thought it would be a good time to learn Olson’s matchup zone defense.

The Mustangs finished second in the camp.

“It surprised us that we played that well, but it helped us realize we could be a good team,” sophomore Chad Poulos said.

Said Olson: “From the beginning of the week until the end you could see they were going to be a good team. They had the enthusiasm that Butch’s teams always have.”

So far, this enthusiasm has translated into victories over Los Amigos, Santa Ana Valley, Buena Park, Santa Ana, San Clemente and Laguna Hills. Not bad for a 2-year-old school that was established in the shadows of El Toro and Mission Viejo.

The team is a diverse mix of people who have come together at the right time.

Leading scorer John Welch played junior varsity basketball at El Toro. Center Gordon McNeill started at Laguna Hills. Forward John Barnes came from Illinois, and Poulos, the point guard, is from Albuquerque.

These players have been melded into a cohesive unit by Taylor. Each knows his role. Welch and McNeill are the scorers; Poulos is the ballhandler; Barnes and 6-9 sophomore Rick Swanwick provide strength.

All played varsity last season, including Poulos and Swanwick, who were freshmen.

“These are guys who are getting an early chance to play on the varsity level because they would be second-level players at the bigger high schools,” Taylor said.

Taylor makes the most out of what he has and doesn’t play outside of his team’s comfort zone.

A prime example was his switch from a man-to-man defense, a trademark of his teams at Long Beach Wilson, to Olson’s 2-3 match-up zone. The results thus far have proved him right.

But then again, Taylor should know what he’s doing.

He coached at Wilson for six years (1970-76) and took two teams to the Southern Section semifinals.

He was an assistant to UC Irvine Coach Bill Mulligan at Long Beach Poly and was offered a position as an assistant to Olson when Olson left Cal State Long Beach for Iowa. Taylor remained in Southern California.

“It would have been a big adjustment for Butch,” Olson said. “He was born and raised in Long Beach.”

But after the 1976 season, Taylor figured he had had enough of coaching and would remain at Wilson as a teacher.

When Jim Barnett, football coach at Long Beach Poly, was hired as football coach at Trabuco Hills, he suggested to Taylor that he apply for the basketball position.

“I really like the life style here (Coto de Caza),” Taylor said. “I also liked the idea of being able to start a program the way I wanted to.”

Olson phoned the school to give Taylor a recommendation.

“Coaching in high school, you put in so much time and effort that you can easily get burned out,” Olson said. “After being out of it, he saw there were parts he missed and may have things in better perspective.”

Trabuco Hills High School opened in 1985 with only 700 students. Its basketball team had a 12-10 record last season as a free-lance team playing mostly small schools, and it joined the Pacific Coast League this season. But it still wasn’t taken too seriously by many teams.

An indication of this feeling came in preseason tournaments, when Santa Ana and Orange Lutheran played Trabuco Hills in the first round of their own tournaments. The Mustangs won both games.

Granted, Santa Ana’s best player, Bobby Joyce, was still playing football, but the victory was still considered an upset.

“They didn’t think we could beat them,” Poulos said. “They still thought of us as a small school.”

Legitimacy may have come when Trabuco Hills played in Canyon High’s tournament. Pairings were made after the season had started, and not only were the Mustangs not paired against the host school in the first round, they were placed in a different bracket.

Trabuco Hills had arrived.