San Jose’s Motley Crew Falls to CS Fullerton

This was a natural. It was the team that had lost its coach--Cal State Fullerton--against the coach who had lost his team.

Ten players walked out on San Jose State’s Bill Berry this week, charging him with verbal abuse and “mental cruelty” and vowing not to play again as long as he was the coach.

So with the backing of Athletic Director Randy Hoffman, Berry put a basketball team--of sorts--on the court Thursday night at Titan Gym. One might be tempted to call it a football team. Besides the four basketball players who did not boycott the game, Berry put four football players, a team manager and three others into uniform.

They didn’t do half badly. They threw a scare into Fullerton by taking a 5-point lead early and later trimming a big lead to 5, but the Titans pulled away for an 82-60 victory that broke a 7-game losing streak.

“The kids really did well under the conditions,” Berry said. “I was pleased with the effort, obviously. I think we will be respectable.”

Concerning the players who boycotted, whom he called “the other team” and “the ex-team,” Berry said:

“It could have been resolved real easily. . . . I think it was an unfortunate decision. . . . I think a few guys could have had a change of heart but got caught up emotionally and couldn’t back out. There are a few guys I can say I might take back. There are some I wouldn’t take back.”

Some of the boycotting players met Thursday with Melvin Belli, the San Francisco lawyer known as “the King of Torts,” according to the San Jose Mercury News and other sources.

Among the players on Berry’s hurriedly assembled new team was Johnny Johnson, the leading rusher on the Spartan football team this season and the second-leading all-purpose rusher in the country. His 2,202 all-purpose yards trailed only Barry Sanders of Oklahoma State, the Heisman Trophy winner.

On one of his first moves, a baseline drive, Johnson would have been credited with a broken tackle on the football field. On the court, it was a charge and his first foul.

But Johnson, with athletic moves to the basket and sharp passing, was one of the delights of the evening.

“At least he had Division I experience, even if it was another sport,” said Dwain Daniels, one of the four team members who did not boycott.

Johnson, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighs 233 pounds, started the game and scored 8 points, adding 4 rebounds and 5 assists.

“He’s a polished basketball player for being a football player,” Fullerton Coach John Sneed said.

San Jose State (5-12 overall, 1-7 in the Big West) also had the distinction of having the only player on the court who had played in the NCAA tournament. That would be newcomer Craig McPherson, who was a member of the Santa Clara team that lost to Iowa in the 1987 tournament.

McPherson, a 6-9 senior, said he left Santa Clara because of a knee injury and because he was “burnt out” on basketball. But, like Johnson, when the distress call came, he responded.

Against Fullerton, he showed some nice moves to the basket and scored a team-high 20 points. Daniels was the second-leading scorer with 16.

Berry assembled his players the night before the game and walked them through a practice Thursday afternoon.

“What you saw was basically from scratch,” said Norman Brown, an outside linebacker on the Spartan football team that lost to Fullerton, 58-13, last season.

“We were sitting in the hotel room, and we said, ‘Let’s get ‘em this time,’ ” Brown said.

Cal State Fullerton, which lost its coach when George McQuarn resigned without comment Nov. 3, was in a bind.

“We were happy to get a win,” Sneed said. “A win is a win. We were expected to win. But we were in a no-win situation. The fans and public would have been happy only with a big win.”

What’s more, these Spartans were a difficult team to prepare for.

“We played OK,” Sneed deadpanned. “Considering we had no pregame scouting report.”

Cedric Ceballos, who took advantage of lax blocking underneath, scored 23 points and pulled down 20 rebounds for Fullerton (5-8, 1-4).