Lions Slowed a Bit by St. Mary’s After Running Over San Diego

The Lions run. That’s not news. Do the Lions run it up? They say no. At least one coach wasn’t going to let them. It may have been the start of conference fireworks.

Loyola opened West Coast Athletic Conference action last Friday by scoring 115 points against the overmatched University of San Diego. That was the most points the Lions have scored in a WCAC game.

The next night the Lions faced somewhat more formidable St. Mary’s, which was second in the nation in defense. The Gaels certainly weren’t going to allow triple figures.

Loyola handled the Gaels with some ease, 98-81, but St. Mary’s Coach Lynn Nance slowed his Galloping Gaels to a crawl in the last minutes. His team, losing 96-74 with 1:35 left, went into a stall. Loyola’s reserves, who wanted to score 100, tried to get the ball back by intentionally fouling--six times. It was almost comical.

Except many of those involved weren’t laughing after the game.

Nance waved off Loyola Coach Paul Westhead’s handshake when the game ended. Privately, he suggested that things will be different for the Lions on the road. He said when he called for a timeout at the 1:35 mark, he didn’t instruct his team to stall, but just to play its normal game and not get caught up in the last few minutes of garbage time. “I didn’t want it to end wild. That’s not our style,” he said.

His team, however, did appear to be holding the ball.

Loyola, meanwhile, was upset that the Gaels would hold the ball when the game was clearly out of reach, just to deny the Lions another 100-point game. When it (mercifully) ended, the 3,200 fans in Gersten Pavilion booed the Gaels.

A Loyola official, when asked why his team had fouled intentionally with such a big lead, said, “Tell them we had to because he (Nance) was being such an ass.”

Westhead described the final minutes as “bizarre” and said he could never remember such a set of circumstances.

Nance, when questioned about his tactics, said incredulously, “Why I did what I did ?. I have never experienced that before, where someone tried to intentionally foul to score 100.”

Said Nance, “I don’t believe it’ll be the same game at some (conference) places on the road. Some places in our league are like playing on the moon.”

The rematch will come in the last week of league play on Feb. 25 at Moraga.

Incidental Statistics: St. Mary’s big loss to Loyola dropped the Gaels from second in the country in scoring defense to eighth. St. Mary’s fell from a 56-point defensive average to 58.9. Loyola’s Saturday opponent, Gonzaga, is 10th in the country in field goal percentage, .528. Loyola senior Mike Yoest, who made 12 of 14 shots in the first two WCAC games, is 12th in the country in field goal percentage at .652.

Of the top eight scorers in the West Coast Athletic Conference, seven are from Loyola or Pepperdine. The only outsider is Gonzaga’s Doug Spradley. Pepperdine and Loyola also have the top three rebounders, the top three three-point shooters and the top two in assists.

Cal State Dominguez Hills doesn’t have a standout scorer--center Anthony Blackmon is third in the California Collegiate Athletic Assn. with a 16.3 average--but the Toros are among league leaders in free throw shooting. Blackmon is second in the CCAA at .848 (39 of 46) and guard Bryan Dell’Amico is third at .841 (37 of 44). Guard Derrick Clark is seventh at .783 (36 of 46). Dell’Amico has made 13 straight and Clark 11 straight. Not surprisingly, the Toros have the top team percentage, .778.

Awards time: Cal State Dominguez Hills baseball Coach Andy Lopez, preparing for a new season, has won another award for the last one. Lopez, who led the Toros to their first appearance in the Division II World Series, has been named District Diamond Baseball coach of the year. Lopez has been selected California Collegiate Athletic Assn. coach of the year for three straight seasons and NCAA Western Region coach of the year last spring.

The Dominguez Hills soccer program is continuing to win awards as well. Senior Michele Salas of the women’s team and sophomore Joe Flanagan on the men’s team have been named to the All-Western Region teams.

Salas, who scored 14 goals and 6 assists, was a first-team selection. Flanagan, who had 13 goals and 4 assists to earn all-conference honors, was named to the regional second team.

El Camino College and Harbor College will open their football season against each other next fall on Sept. 10 at El Camino.

For the Warriors, who will compete in the new three-tiered Mission Conference, it will be the only non-conference game. For Harbor, it will be a chance to whip up some local interest.

The new Mission Conference has also changed its starting times. Conference games will start at 7 p.m. The new kickoff time is a compromise between teams that wanted to start at 6 p.m.--to assure better media coverage of late-ending games--and those who wanted to maintain the traditional 7:30 starts.

Loyola will make its opening pitch for the baseball season with its annual hot stove league banquet Wednesday at the Amfac hotel in Westchester. Pitcher Bert Blyleven of the World Series champion Minnesota Twins will be the keynote speaker.

Blyleven will be among several baseball celebrities on hand for the dinner, which honors the Lions baseball team as it prepares to open the season Feb. 1. Loyola is expected to have a contender for the West Coast Athletic Conference title and NCAA playoffs under fourth-year Coach Dave Snow.

The banquet is public at $50 or $30 for children under 14. It begins with cocktails at 6 p.m. The dinner is at 7 and the program at 8. Information is available through the Loyola athletic department, 642-2765. Proceeds benefit the baseball program.

College Notes

Home cooking is alive and well in the West Coast Athletic Conference. After a week of men’s basketball, four teams were 2-0 and the other four were 0-2. All victories came at home . . . Streaking is also alive and well in the WCAC. Loyola entered the week on a nine-game win streak. Santa Clara has won seven straight and Pepperdine and San Francisco have won four straight . . . Corine Sandfry, a junior guard at Chapman College out of Bishop Montgomery High, has grabbed 23 rebounds and shot 53% from the field in her last three games. She’s averaging 10.4 points . . . Portland University assistant basketball coach Tim Miller, who coached against Loyola Thursday night, is a 1970 graduate of Loyola where he averaged about two points as a junior and senior. He was an assistant at Stanford before coaching at Linfield College in Oregon.