Crespi Line Gets Into Offensive Mood : Celts Must Open Holes in Ferocious Loyola Defense

When Darren Osti rolls out of bed, he follows a ritual. He wipes the sleep from his eyes. He rubs what hair remains on a closely cropped scalp. He takes a quick anatomical inventory to see if he’s still ambulatory after the previous day’s practice. Then he takes a good long look at his bulletin board.

There, prominently placed among the more typical trappings of a 17-year-old’s room, is a picture of Josh Price, Loyola High’s 6-2 1/2, 225-pound linebacker.

“He’s up there in his uniform, in all his pride and glory,” said Osti, a 6-0, 205-pound offensive lineman at Crespi. “Every time I wake up I see Josh Price.”

Kyle Cummings, Crespi’s senior center, thinks often about Loyola as well. Cummings (5-10, 220) has comeuppance on his mind, specifically regarding Loyola nose guard Paul Sellers.

“We’ve exchanged words,” Cummings said. “Last year, at a couple of track meets we had against them, he came up to me to say how much quicker he is than me, how he’s going to beat me in this game.”

Sophomore guard Dan Hunt was slurping baby food as a 1-year-old the last time Crespi won a Del Rey League title, way back in 1973. Hunt’s mouth goes dry when he thinks about Loyola linebacker Chris Hentz.

“I’m pretty psyched out about it,” Hunt said, his voice cracking slightly. “I’m a little nervous, but I’m looking forward to it.”

Others eagerly await the game, too. As many as 11,000 fans are expected to attend Saturday’s 8 p.m. game at Birmingham High between Crespi and Loyola, which will decide the Del Rey championship.

The game shapes up as a classic battle between offense and defense, wherein Crespi, the irresistible force, meets Loyola, the immovable object.

Loyola (8-0, 3-0 in league play) has allowed 31 points all season. Crespi (7-0-1, 3-0) is averaging 29.2 points in the just the first half in the past five games and is averaging 43 points a game. Crespi has outscored its opponents, 346-93. Loyola has allowed three touchdowns, three field goals, a couple of extra points and a safety. Crespi running back Russell White has scored 28 touchdowns, the second-highest total in the state. Crespi is ranked No. 8 in the nation by USA Today and Loyola is No. 14.

Yet, for White to continue running over the opposition--he has 14 touchdowns in the past three games--he’ll need some help from friends. Hunt, Cummings, Osti and the rest of the Crespi offensive line are a focal point. Will Crespi’s explosive offense be smothered?

Crespi’s fine line from ’86 is long gone. It never attracted headlines, but it attracted college scouts. Sean Howard is at UCLA. John Carpenter is at Stanford. Steve Puryear, Billy Redell, Robert Teutonico and Joe Donoghue graduated as well.

“What did we lose? We lost the whole line, that’s what,” tight end coach Don Klinkhammer said. “We all wondered what would happen after they graduated.”

This season’s less-seasoned Celts are more of the everyman variety.

“If you take a look at them, they’re almost clones,” said Joel Wilker, who coaches the offensive line. “They’re almost all in the 5-10 and 6-0 range, and they all weigh about 200 to 215 pounds.”

Early on, the ’87 group could have been called the force of little resistance. Especially distressing was the way it was pushed around in a 17-17 tie with Redlands in the season opener, a game that cost Crespi the nation’s No. 1 ranking. Crespi’s failure to score on three quarterback sneaks from the Redlands one-yard line in the final two minutes underscored what many pointed to as a chink in the Celts’ armor.

“Last year I guess I had gotten used to relying on the seniors,” said tackle Kevin Yates, a 6-0, 215-pound senior who played as a backup last season. “In the Redlands game, I looked around the huddle and realized that I’m one of the people everybody was looking at to get the job done. They were looking at me.”

Under the glare of a national spotlight, the Celts melted.

“Then the second game came around,” Yates said.

Against Palmdale, the Crespi coaching staff resisted the urge to perform an overhaul and tinkered with and tuned up the Celt machinery. Hunt was inserted for Chris Romero, who assumed a full-time role at linebacker. Left tackle Mike Parkes (6-2, 205) was relieved of defensive-line duties, which reduced the fatigue caused by playing both ways.

Tied, 7-7, at the half, Crespi scored three touchdowns in the second half to defeat highly regarded Palmdale, 28-7. It is Palmdale’s only loss.

“It was after the Redlands game that we said, ‘Hey, it’s going to be tough this year,’ ” said Cummings, a second-team, Times All-Valley selection at nose guard last year. “Redlands threw some weird stuff at us, and we thought, ‘We’ll see this all year, so we might as well learn to block it, and learn to block it now .’ ”

Everyone was red-faced over the tie with Redlands, so it was more a matter of pride as anything else that made the line play finally click.

“After Redlands, I knew it could go either way: down and be a terrible season, or we would pull together and become a good team,” Yates said. “That Palmdale game pulled us together.”

Two months later, the green bunch is playing for the league title.

“They’ve matured,” Wilker said. “They’ve always had the skills and tools, now they’re working together.”

Against Loyola, sticking together sounds like a pretty good idea.

Hentz and Price, both seniors, are Loyola’s inside linebackers. Price is a preseason All-American and was an all-league pick last year.

“He’s like a rover, he doesn’t really come at you, he steps back and makes you commit,” said Osti, who faced Price last year. “He’s not just a good player but he’s a smart one. Shoot, he’s been playing varsity since he was a sophomore.”

Price is being heavily recruited by several schools, including USC. Price isn’t the only Division I prospect at the position, however. Hentz, a solid 6-3, 215, is also being recruited. Hence, the concern.

“They’ve got one of the most aggressive defenses you’ll ever see,” Wilker said. “They’re a very physical team that just doesn’t make mistakes.”

Mistakes? Loyola’s first-string defense has allowed only 23 points, which means they screw up about as often as the Ayatollah goes pleasure boating in the Persian Gulf.

Loyola plays from a 3-4 alignment, or what they prefer to call a “50 defense.”

“The 3-4 would be the term for it in the ‘80s,” Loyola defensive coordinator Jon Dawson said. “It’s pretty simple, really. It sounds dumb, but we don’t do anything fancy. We don’t dare anybody to pass and we don’t dare them to run.

“We just react to what the offense does. It’s pretty archaic, I guess.”

Talent tends to make obsolescence tolerable, if not enjoyable. The Cubs have surrendered a total of 371 rushing and 569 passing yards--an average of only 117 yards a game.

“They might say they play a vanilla defense, and they might not give you a bunch of different looks, but they do what they do tremendously well,” Wilker said. “They give up 5- and 10-yard gains, but they don’t usually give up the long ones.”

Will that make the night a long one for Crespi?

“I really think that with the defense Loyola has that it’s going to be tough for the offensive line to make the long drive,” Cummings said. “I mean, we’ve scored 44 points a game or whatever, but we really haven’t been tested like that where anybody just stuffs us. This is a big test for us.”

In addition to Hentz and Price, outside linebackers Mike Gilhooley (5-11, 190) and Dan Glascott (5-11, 190) were second-team All-Del Rey picks last season as juniors.

The Cub defensive line is also well-stocked. Junior right end Matt Butkus, the son of former Chicago Bears linebacker Dick Butkus, is the team leader with 12 sacks. He has 51 tackles and has caused three fumbles. Butkus (6-3, 225) started the season on the offensive line, but moved to defense after the first game.

“Matt is one of those quick, nasty, aggressive guys,” Dawson said. “I don’t mean that to sound negative, of course. He’s just well-suited to play defense.”

Start a list. There are others.

Sellers (6-0, 205) played nose guard as a junior. He has played well in place of Anthony Holly, an all-league pick who graduated. Sellers has six sacks and 59 tackles. Junior Todd Brady (6-3, 225) starts at left end. Brady has 42 tackles.

Junior free safety Jim Klein, the son of former Rams tight end Bob Klein, and senior cornerback Andres Kennedy key the secondary. Cornerback Paul Baker, who lives in Woodland Hills, also starts.

Loyola has a history of stopping the running game. In 1979, Loyola held Kevin Nelson of Pius X to 22 yards on 28 carries. Loyola was also 2-0 against Banning when the Pilots had Freeman McNeil in 1975-76. Nelson and McNeil both went on to star at UCLA. If Loyola shuts down White, everyone will know where he’s going to college.

But everyone wants to know whether the Cubs can tether White. The thing is, Loyola doesn’t really expect to. Quarterback Ron Redell and fullback J. J. Lasley give the opposition other facets to fret about.

“Crespi has a ton of weapons,” Dawson said. “White is a great player--I’m not nearly naive enough to think he won’t bust one. And J. J., well, he’s one of the better backs in Southern California. And Redell threw for a zillion yards last year for the JVs.”

Last year, Loyola was the only team to hold White under 100 yards in Crespi’s 14 games. White finished with 96 yards on 18 carries, but Crespi erased a 14-0 halftime deficit to win, 21-14. The Celts went on to win the Big Five Conference championship.

After a start slowed by injury, White is back on the pace he set in ‘86, when he led the state with 2,339 yards (167 per game) and averaged 12.0 yards a carry. This season--new line and all--White has 1,487 yards (186 per game) and an average of 11.3 a carry. He is also only three touchdowns shy of his ’86 mark of 31.

White says he sees improvement in the line each day in practice.

“They get better all the time,” he said. “You can see the change in them. They’re getting stronger and faster. Sometimes, it’s not always them running to catch me, it’s me running to catch up with them.”

At Crespi, the relationship between a lineman and a running back is symbiotic, Wilker said. When it comes down to blocking for a back after a handoff, one hand washes the other.

“It’s kind of funny, when you see them around school, all the linemen stick together,” he said. “But they stick with Russell and J. J., too. They all sort of feed off each other.

“The line knows that Russell and J.J. can amke them look very good. Russell and J.J. know the line helps make them as good as they are.”

Said Yates: “That’s a real strength of this team-we don’t criticize each other. When everyone’s yelling at each other, you feel hard an thinking of all the pain it makes you want to play well for them.”