High School Notebook : The New Brown in Town Helps Granada Hills Open League Play With 4-1 Mark

The name in Saturday’s box score had a pleasantly familiar look to Granada Hills supporters. The key figure in a 101-66 victory over Monroe loomed large in small type: Brown, 30 points and 15 rebounds.

Granada Hills Coach Bob Johnson expected those kind of numbers from Sean Brown, who played on last season’s team that won the City Section 3-A Division championship. Well, Brown is in the lineup, but it’s a different person.

Sean Brown was an All-City tight end and he will be one of the top outfielders in the City. But the senior chose to sit out the basketball season.

The new Brown act in Granada Hills basketball is authored by Alvin, a 6-3, 225-pound junior center who has emerged as a player worthy of the name. Brown, who is unrelated to Sean, is the team’s leading scorer (16.2), rebounder (12.0) and chief reason this has become more than a rebuilding year at Granada Hills.

While the Highlanders fashioned a City title last season, Alvin Brown labored unimpressively on the junior varsity. His biggest accomplishment was driving Johnson crazy with frustration.

“It would be so frustrating because I thought he could be better than he was,” Johnson said. “He was a pretty good player but he couldn’t score. He missed everything he shot, it seemed.”

Brown took his inaccuracy to the USC campus where he played all summer in pickup games with Trojan players Chris Munk and Anthony Pendleton.

“When I first started I didn’t want to shoot because I was afraid of getting it blocked,” he said. “I missed a lot of inside shots last year so I worked on my layups. When my shots started falling, I started getting more confident.”

Brown looked like a new player to Johnson.

“I cannot believe how much he’s come along,” Johnson said. “We had not anticipated him being this good. He’s made the total difference in our team. If he wasn’t there, we’d be a losing team.”

Instead, Granada Hills has won five of its past six and actually has a better Northwest Valley League record through the first round of play than last season’s team that included Sean Brown, Gary Gray and Sam Puathasnanon. Granada Hills, which is 8-4 and 4-1 in league play, started with a 3-2 record last season.

The over-under: Granada Hills on Wednesday plays for first place in the league against San Fernando (11-4, 5-0), which won the first meeting, 71-60.

The burden of beating San Fernando probably will fall on the shoulders of Johnson--not the coach but the player. Junior point guard John Johnson will be asked to beat the San Fernando press.

In their last meeting, San Fernando’s talented guard tandem of Tory Stephens and Joe Mauldin forced numerous ballhandling errors and kept Granada Hills from getting the ball inside to its strength in Brown and Kyle Jan.

Height may have been a problem. Stephens (6-2) and Mauldin (6-2) both tower over the 5-8 Johnson.

“We were trying to get the ball over them, which put us at a disadvantage,” Bob Johnson said. “This time we’ll try to get the ball under them.”

Recruiting conflict: Granada Hills played Monroe without starters Amir Hatam, who was sick, and Jan, who is on a recruiting trip to Washington State. Jan, a 6-4 forward, was an All-Valley wide receiver on the football team. He is also being recruited by Stanford, Arizona State and Washington and must juggle his schedule between selecting a college and basketball.

He is meeting with Stanford recruiters Tuesday and tentatively has scheduled a trip to Palo Alto next weekend, which may have to be postponed because of Friday’s basketball game at Chatsworth.

Rave Reviews: Although Chris Mills of Fairfax stole the show in an 87-76 win over Taft on Friday, Taft Coach Jim Woodard raved about the play of Quincy Watts, the Toreadors’ senior guard.

The 6-3 senior guard scored 26 points, converting 13 of 17 field-goal attempts while playing head-to-head with Mills.

“He made 11 of his baskets from outside,” Woodard said. “When Mills got in his face Quincy drove the basket and pulled up for his jumper. That was Quincy’s best game on offense ever.”

Watts agreed but said his play had little effect on Mills, who had a game-high 37 points. “I don’t think it bothered him much because he was doing the job himself on his end,” he said.

Add Watts: Immediately after Friday’s afternoon game at Fairfax, Watts headed for the Sports Arena for the Sunkist Invitational where he assumed the unlikely role as spectator at a track meet. Watts is the two-time defending 200-meter state champion and had the nation’s fastest times among high school sprinters in the 100 (10.30) and the 200 (20.50) last year.

Watts scouted the competition in the 60-meter dash, focusing on Tony Miller of Riordan High in San Francisco and Brian Bridgewater from Washington High in Los Angeles, who finished 1-2.

Watts enjoyed his role as spectator--until he heard the crowd roar for the winners in the sprint events.

“After the race was over and the crowd got going, I wanted to be down there,” he said. “It made me miss track.”

Good to his word: Saugus forward Jason Harrison, whose basket inside helped the Centurions beat Golden League rival Canyon, 47-44, in overtime Friday night, has delivered on a pledge to Coach John Clark.

Harrison, a transfer from Hamilton, walked into the Saugus gym last summer and told Clark that he wanted to join the defending Southern Section 3-A Division champions.

“He said he was more than willing to fit in,” Clark said. “But there was so much for him to learn. I didn’t know if he could play, but he certainly can.”

The 6-2 senior finally cracked the starting lineup six games ago and has been averaging 8.5 points and 8.5 rebounds a game. Harrison had 9 points and 10 rebounds against Canyon. In a 41-39 overtime win against Antelope Valley last week, Harrison led Saugus with 13 points, including all four of the team’s points in overtime.

Staff writer Vince Kowalick contributed to this notebook.