Cleveland Makes Most of Trip to Granada Hills

No one knew for sure exactly how long it had been since the last time Cleveland High’s basketball team had packed up its running game, its press, its armload of Division I talent and all its depth, tossed it into the bus and hauled it over to Granada Hills for a neighborhood get-together.

Bob Braswell, Cleveland’s coach and a former Cavalier player, guessed it had been at least a decade.

Bob Johnson, Granada Hills’ coach, reckoned it was about 15 years.

The correct answer for Highlander fans should be, “Not long enough.”

“I didn’t mind not playing them,” Johnson said with a forced smile after Cleveland’s 102-74 North Valley League win Friday night. “They’re just the best team in the Valley by far. The rest of us are trying to find out who’s second best.”

That’s the scary part. The Valley’s second-best team just might be Cleveland’s second team.

But first, a little on Lucious Harris, Cleveland’s 6-foot, 5-inch Long Beach State-bound forward who scored a game-high 35 points on 14 of 21 field-goal attempts. He made 2 3-point shots and 5 of 6 free throws.

“How do you guard a guy who can shoot like that?” Johnson asked no one in particular.

After missing his first shot, Harris was good on his next 7 and 9 of his next 10.

“I felt it tonight,” Harris said. “We came out with a lot of intensity.”

Said Braswell: “I didn’t realize he scored that many points. He really had to take over and he did.”

Harris took on that role because guard Adonis Jordan scored just 7 points, more than 13 below his season average, and fellow forward Warren Harrell (12 points) got into early foul trouble.

Granada Hills, however, managed to hang on to Cleveland’s shirttails for much of the game, although the Highlanders never led after a 5-3 start.

They trailed, 70-60, early in the fourth quarter until the Cavaliers picked up the pace in time to score 32 of the final 46 points and improve to 15-2, 5-0 in league play. The victory was Cleveland’s 12th in a row.

Cleveland’s vaunted press--which forced 21 of Granada Hills’ 33 turnovers--and depth stifled the Highlanders.

Etienne Graves scored 7 points in the fourth quarter when the outcome was still in question, Eddie Hill scored 16 and Andre Chevalier and Mike Butler each added 4 points--all at crucial times.

“We did the best we could over a period of time, then they just wore us down,” Johnson said. “We really worked on breaking (the press), but it’s hard to practice against. We’d get frustrated and start rushing it. We had all kinds of problems.”

Center Alvin Brown led Granada Hills with 17 points, Jamal Brantley had 14, Joey Rosas 13 and Aaron Lattimore and John Johnson 10 each.

Braswell said that the real turning point may have come at the end of the first quarter when, as the buzzer sounded, a prankster turned out the lights and the gym went black. The court was pelted by toilet paper, cups, licorice sticks . . . in short, anything that could be thrown a substantial distance.

A technical foul was called and Hill made both free throws. On the ensuing possession Harris slammed in an alley-oop from Jordan to give the Cavaliers a 29-20 lead.

There was, for Johnson, some good that came of the teams’ reacquaintance, however.

“At least we know something about them,” he said.

They know not to invite them back.