The High Schools : Box Defense Stymies a Roaming Braswell

Every team that has faced the Cleveland basketball team’s aggressive defense this season has felt a noose. It is a constricting feeling comparable to spending a night locked in a tiny broom closet. With John Candy.

Last Friday night at Granada Hills, Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell also felt cramped, for once.

With a roll of white athletic tape in hand, Granada Hills Coach Bob Johnson designed a box-and-one defense just for the Cleveland coach. Braswell, you see, sometimes covers more ground in a game than some of his point guards.

“I walk into the gym and Johnson says, ‘Here’s your coaching box,’ ” Braswell said in reference to the area staked out by officials to confine coaches to within a few feet of their bench. “It’s about a foot big. A foot by a foot.”

Johnson’s area, needless to say, was considerably larger.

“I look down at his box and it’s about 20 feet long, all the way down to the end of their bench,” Braswell recalled. “I said, ‘You gotta be kidding me.’ ”

Johnson was.

Add Cleveland-Granada Hills: The Cavaliers led only 25-20 at the end of the first quarter, bringing more than a little excitement to a game that was already well-charged. Then, with both teams in their huddles, someone turned out the gym lights.

“I though at first the power had just gone out,” Braswell said. “Then, when they came back on, there was toilet paper everywhere.”

The prank resulted in a technical foul against the Highlanders for delay of game. Eddie Hill made both free throws and Lucious Harris scored on an alley-oop dunk off a pass from Adonis Jordan to complete a 4-point play scant moments into the second quarter. Almost instantly, Cleveland’s lead had grown to 29-20.

Was the T-is-for-TP whistle a big one? You be the judge: Granada Hills never came closer than 8 points and lost, 102-74.

“Looking at it now, it seems kind of funny,” Braswell said.

Pugilism probe: In the aftermath of the third-quarter fight Saturday night, Bell-Jeff Coach Joe Dunn said that he will review videotape of the game against Notre Dame to determine if disciplinary measures for any of his players are necessary.

“I don’t tolerate that stuff,” Dunn said. “If they’re guilty, I want the kids to know that they’re not gonna get away with it.”

The scuffle began with Notre Dame’s Pico Sandoval and Bell-Jeff’s Matt Corse coming to blows during a pause in play and ended with the ejection of both players and a fan. Several players spilled onto the court.

Dunn also said he will request that Notre Dame Coach Mick Cady review the film for similar reasons.

Rocky horror: The rookie season of Rocky Moore has started to haunt him. The good-natured Alemany coach claimed that he had a nightmare about Tuesday’s game against Loyola (16-2), the Del Rey League’s first-place team.

“I’m petrified of playing them,” Moore said. “I dreamed we got beat, 150-2.”

In Moore’s nightmare, his team’s only points were scored on a bank shot by seldom-used Matt Garland.

Said Moore: “I was yelling that it was a 3-point shot, but the referee told me that he stepped on the line.”

Reality was somewhat kinder: Loyola defeated Alemany, 81-62.

Bump and run: Tony Borquez of Alemany displayed uncommon composure in his victory in the boys’ 500-yard dash at the Sunkist Invitational on Friday night.

Although Borquez bumped into a photographer in the first 40 yards of the race, tangled arms with fellow competitor Rodney Burt of Birmingham shortly thereafter and found himself 8 yards behind the leaders after the first lap on the 160-yard track, he never panicked.

“I never really got discouraged,” Borquez said. “I just tried to keep my cool.”

Saracen swordsmen: Nine members of the Harvard fencing team have qualified for the National Junior Olympic Fencing Championships at the U. S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., Feb. 17-20. Joachim Granzow, Jay Dolinky, Matt Eddy, Michael Fleisher, Damien Stein, Ian Burnap, Shig Nakamura and Nick Daum will lead the Saracens in their sixth consecutive appearance in the national championships.

Staff writers Tim Brown, Steve Elling, Sam Farmer and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.