The Preps : Crenshaw Has Unusual Role of Underdog

The Crenshaw High School basketball team? You remember the Cougars.

Coach is a flashy dresser, team is full of flashy dunkers. Suffocating full-court zone press. Two-time defending California Division I champions, three straight City 4-A titles.

How quickly they forget.

“We’re still the defending champs,” Coach Willie West said. “We still have to be beaten before they can take (the title) away from us.”

Still, this has been Fairfax’s season from the start, and Crenshaw is something of an unknown quality. West graduated three standouts last year--Stephen Thompson, Ronald Caldwell and Dion Brown--and lost two of his top players of 1986-87, Douglas Meekins and Deon Myricks, to academic problems at the start of this season.

Myricks returned in early February, but Meekins never did. The Cougars are 17-4 and will play host to Fremont (11-11) in a quarterfinal playoff game Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. with forward John Staggers averaging 28 points a game, center Mark Day 14 points and 8 rebounds, Myricks 6 and 6.

But decided underdogs in the race for the City title?

“It’s not the position I (normally) want to be in, but I’m sort of enjoying it for the moment,” West said. “Let somebody take a look at the other teams. It’s hard to stay there on top when everybody wants to knock you down.

“Even then, we’re the team everybody likes to beat, even though Fairfax gets all the publicity.”

John Hazelton, who served as a volunteer coach at USC last fall, has been named the head football coach at Wilmington Banning High, replacing Chris Ferragamo, the school announced Monday.

Hazelton, 35, has been coaching since he was 19, when he was co-coach at Montclair Prep High in Van Nuys. He had two stints at Montclair Prep, as co-coach from 1971 to 1977 and as head coach from 1982 to 1985. In between, he was assistant at Crenshaw High and Valley College.

Hazelton was 30-16 in his second stint at Montclair Prep, leaving in 1985 to take the non-paying job at USC.

After accepting the job Monday afternoon, Hazelton was introduced to the team by Ferragamo. Hazelton told the team that his goals for 1987 include a City championship, a national championship, and to beat long-time rival Carson.

Ferragamo left Banning to take over as coach at Harbor College. Banning won eight City titles in his 11 years under Ferragamo, who left with a career mark of 158-35-4.

Is it possible that someone who has signed to play Division I college basketball could be one of the more underrated players on his team? Meet J.D. Green of Fairfax, third in scoring and attention on the top-ranked squad in California, behind Chris Mills and Sean Higgins, but the No. 1 defensive player while averaging 19 points and 7.5 rebounds a game.

“I’ve been very pleased with his play,” Coach Harvey Kitani said as the regular season wound down. “That has a lot to do with the way our team is going. His overall mental approach to the game has been so consistent. He’s a thoroughbred. He’s dominated a few games for us.”

Green, bound for Southern Methodist, scored 20, 31 and 40 points in the final three games of the regular season, when Mills was out with a knee injury and starting guard Dave Henderson had academic problems. Then, in a 79-66 win over Washington last Friday to open the City 4-A playoffs, Green scored 19.

“In the 11th grade, I would try to attack the game too much and would rush,” he said. “This year, I don’t have anything to prove. Last year, I had come from another school (Santa Monica) and felt like I had to prove myself to the other players. This year, I’m one of the leaders.”

Added Mills, who scored a game-high 31 Friday in his first game back and is averaging a team-leading 24.9: “He’s looking for the ball. Wherever the ball is, J.D. will be around it.”

Fairfax (22-0) will be in the quarterfinals Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. against L.A. Manual Arts 15-6.

The big finish for college football recruiting 1987 belongs to. . . .

San Diego State?

Barring any changes, look for the Aztecs of the Western Athletic Conference to land running back Tommy Booker of Vista and wide receiver Patrick Rowe of San Diego Lincoln, two of the most-sought players in the state.

Booker, rated among the top 10 prospects in the nation by several publications, is also looking at Washington and Arizona State; Rowe at UCLA, USC and Arizona State.

Amazing what an appearance in the Holiday Bowl will do for a team.

“I’m just waiting for my dad to sign the papers,” Booker told Chris Ello of The Times last Friday. “There’s no way he’s going to talk me out of going to San Diego State. The only reason we’re waiting is because he wants me to be sure. But those big schools just didn’t catch me.”

Remember the father of Mickey Joseph, the standout from Louisiana, ripping Oklahoma for saying how his son was the only quarterback the Sooners were recruiting and how Nebraska, Notre Dame and Tulane were the only schools that recruited honestly?

Turns out that Notre Dame should be dropped from the list, too, according to Mickey Joseph.

The Fighting Irish, originally the first choice of Joseph’s mother, were selling the idea of an option-oriented offense. But then Kent Graham of Wheaton, Ill., made an oral commitment and told Chicago newspapers that Notre Dame had promised him a drop-back passing attack.

“My bag was lighter after that,” Joseph told the Omaha World-Herald.

Joseph signed with Nebraska and so did in-state running back Leodis Flowers, giving the Cornhuskers a very good recruiting class.

Prep Notes In the locker room before the Southern Section 3-A first-round game against second-seeded Anaheim Katella, Saugus Coach John Clark showed his team “Rocky III.” The Centurions, after winning a wild-card game against Newhall Hart two days before and making a 70-mile bus drive that day, went out and upset Katella, 69-68, in overtime. . . . Brian Williams of Santa Monica St. Monica had nine blocked shots in Friday’s 5-A playoff win over Mission Hills Alemany, equaling his season average. “When I shot, there was that little thought in the back of my mind that he was going to send it into the fourth row,” Alemany center Bill Lucid said afterward. . . . Bob Johnson of El Toro and Bill Redell of Encino Crespi have been named coaches for the South team for the 1987 Shrine all-star football game, scheduled for Aug. 1 at the Rose Bowl.

Keely Brooks of City of Industry Workman finished as the Southern Section’s regular-season scoring champion with an average of 31.4 points a game. Kerry Gardner of Bloomington Christian, with a 31.3-point average, and Darrick Martin of Long Beach St. Anthony at 30.4, both juniors, were the only others to average 30 or more points.