The High Schools : Rio Mesa Surrounds Thomas With Talent

For the first time in 3 seasons, the Rio Mesa High boys’ basketball team is more than just Eric Thomas.

Thomas, a 6-foot, 6-inch junior forward and the first player to make the All-Ventura County team as a freshman, finally has company--most notably, 6-5 swingman Jeff Garner. Garner averaged 27 points and Thomas nearly 22 during the team’s first 3 games.

The tendency has been to compare the two. Who’s better? Rio Mesa Coach Steve Wolf diplomatically insists that they play different games, and therefore their styles mesh.

“Jeff is the most aggressive,” Wolf said. “The most talented is Eric.”

Despite all of his talent, however, Thomas has been unable to lift the Spartans into the playoffs. They might make it this season, but it will not be a solo effort. Wolf has surrounded Thomas with a group of gritty players such as pesky guards Lester Smith and Bruce Yamamoto, center Derek Kawai and, off the bench, forwards Chad Worden and Steve Killgore.

“This is fun,” Thomas said Wednesday after the Spartans’ 67-58 win over Beverly Hills. “I’ve never been to the playoffs. I really want to go.”

Disciplined approach: Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell insists that he does not play favorites and that any player who is late for practice or otherwise rocks the boat will be benched.

Braswell proved his point Tuesday night when he sent reserve guard Etienne Graves to the locker room in the second quarter after Graves shoved a Crossroads player. Cleveland forward Bobby McRae, a junior starter who got off to a slow start defensively when Crossroads forward Brandon Wilkerson made his first 5 field-goal attempts to give Crossroads a 10-9 lead early in the first quarter, was sent to the bench.

The punishment? At halftime, Graves and McRae were seen leaving the Cleveland gym in street clothes. By Thursday, both were back on the team.

“They learned a valuable lesson,” Braswell said.

Slow times: El Camino Real, which is 3-1 and ranked No. 4 in the Valley by The Times, will not be making much of a move in the rankings for the next few days. The Conquistadores do not have another game until Dec. 26 when they open play in a 30-team Las Vegas invitational tournament against Fairdale, Ky., at Nevada Las Vegas’ North Campus Gym.

The Conquistadores had a game scheduled for last Wednesday night against Westlake, but Westlake backed out several weeks ago, El Camino Real Coach Mike McNulty said. Since then, McNulty has been unsuccessfully beating the bushes for an opponent.

“We tried to get into the North Hollywood tournament and a couple of others, but they were already full,” McNulty said. “I guess you have to get in these things early or they fill up.”

McNulty will be getting his tournament fill through other avenues. Because El Camino Real had nobody to play, he spent the free time scouting future Northwest Valley Conference opponents--specifically, Taft and Kennedy--at the Hamilton tournament.

Name game: One of Campbell Hall’s guards is not being flip when he introduces himself, but he does see his share of double takes.

“Hi, I’m Flip Sides,” he says as an immediate icebreaker. And when he adds that his father works for a record company, people nod knowingly. Only in L. A.

Truth is, Flip was named in Pasadena (i.e. Pasadena, Texas), where his father worked for a radio station. Rob Sides invoked the name of an unlikely source in defense of his son’s name.

“If Frank Zappa can name his kid Moon Unit, I guess Flip isn’t too bad,” he said.

Flip thinks it’s great: “I love it. I have fun with it and it’s a great way to meet people.”

Burroughs’ musings: How good is Burroughs, which plays in the Roosevelt Holiday Classic in Hawaii this week? The Indians are 5-3, with 2 of the losses coming in overtime in tournament championship games (to Crescenta Valley, 79-66, and Grant, 75-69). Burroughs’ third loss was to Beverly Hills, 72-69.

“A break here or break there,” Coach Ira Sollod said, “and we could have won a couple of those.”

Surprisingly, the Indians are surging despite the transfer of Eddie Hill to Cleveland.

“He’s definitely a good player,” Sollod said of Hill, who scored 38 points off the bench against Riordan of San Francisco last week. “But, as a team, we’re as good or better. We’re scoring a ton, so it’s not like we’re missing the points.”

All-Foothill League forward Dan Murphy has something to do with that. The senior is averaging 24.3 points and 10 rebounds a game.

Rocky start: The Alemany boys’ basketball team is 0-4 and first-year Coach Rocky Moore says that the losing streak will continue unless the Indians can balance their offensive attack.

“Teams are doing their homework,” Moore said. “They know if they stop Jon Beauchemin, they stop us. He’s going through a lot of mental frustration because he doesn’t have the supporting cast.”

But it is Moore, not Beauchemin, who seems the most frustrated. He benched Brian Swanson and Mark Dannemiller for Monday’s game against Bishop Amat because both were ejected from an earlier game for fighting with Thousand Oaks players.

“It’s all about discipline,” Moore explains. “They’ve never had it. They’ve always done what they wanted to.”

Down but not out: Deena Drossin of Agoura may have finished 6 places lower and run 25 seconds slower at the Kinney national cross-country championships this year than in 1987, but the Charger sophomore was still pleased with her performance at Morley Field in San Diego on Dec. 10.

“I’m happy with the way I ran,” said Drossin, who missed the first half of the season with an injured right foot. “But I never really felt that good during the race. I felt tired most of the race and my legs felt heavy. I never really got into a groove.”

Drossin was 11th in last year’s Kinney nationals with a 17:50.9 clocking over the 5,000-meter course. This year she was 17th in 18:16. But Agoura Coach Bill Duley was not overly concerned.

“This year was intentionally more relaxed than last year,” Duley said. “I didn’t think it was possible for Deena to hold the same mental intensity she had last year for the next three years, so we weren’t quite as intense in training. But I think it will pay off in her last two years. I think she’ll continue to improve.”

Staff writers Tim Brown, Steve Elling, San Farmer, John Lynch, Vince Kowalick and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.