The High Schools : Basketball-Playing Murphy Twins Share Little More Than Last Name

In case anyone has been wondering, yes, Dan and Dave Murphy, teammates on the Burroughs basketball team, are twins.

Can’t you tell by the similarities between the 2 seniors? Actually, you’d have to look very hard to find any.

Dan stands 6 feet, 2 inches, Dave 5-11. Dan has brown eyes, Dave’s are blue. Dan is right-handed, Dave is left-handed.

From all appearances, well, most anyone will admit that they do not look much like twins.

A common reaction, according to Dave: “You’re twins? No! You’ve gotta be kidding.”

Said Dan: “I don’t know why, but people are always mixing up our names.”

Admittedly, Dan is the more athletic, Dave more academic.

Dan, a starting forward and first-team All-Foothill League selection, is the Indians’ leading scorer, averaging 22.8 points a game. Dave, the team’s seventh man, averages about 3 points a game and carries a 3.2 grade-point average.

Dan, however, is no slouch in the classroom, carrying a 2.9 GPA. And Dave defends his reserve role, saying, “I play a lot, what are you talking about?”

The pair also go separate ways when it comes to college preference. Dan is interested in Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, Dave likes UC Santa Barbara.

Here comes the blitz: For Kennedy to stay within striking range of Cleveland tonight, Kennedy Coach Yutaka Shimizu said that his ballhandlers must withstand a pass rush of sorts from the Cavaliers.

“I liken it to a football game,” Shimizu said. “When a quarterback gets in trouble, the receiver has to react to that. The receiver has to look for the open spots, but he has to watch the quarterback and know when to come back to the ball and help out.

“Sometimes, you have to throw short before you can throw long. It’s the same principle for basketball. I don’t know where it came from first, football or basketball.”

And if Kennedy can’t execute Shimizu’s game plan? Well, turnover is the same in both sports.

Dishing off: Mike Cassidy is quite popular among teammates. That’s because he is always feeding them the ball.

Cassidy, a senior point guard for St. Genevieve, is the Valley-area assist leader, doling out an average of 11.4 a game.

Why such generosity?

“I don’t know,” said Cassidy, son of Pete Cassidy, the Cal State Northridge men’s basketball coach. “It just comes.

“I think most guys go for points. They figure that’s the way they’ll get noticed, which is basically true. People always ask, ‘How many points did he get?’ That’s just the way it is.”

Cassidy, by the way, is also averaging a team-high 16.1 points a game.

Trying to go the distance: The boys’ seeded 2-mile race in the Sunkist Invitational indoor track meet at the Sports Arena last Friday was billed as a rematch between Brian Grosso of Walled Lake, Mich., and Bryan Dameworth of Agoura.

However, Grosso took the lead shortly after the 440-yard mark and won going away in 9 minutes, 9 seconds.

Grosso, the 1988 Kinney national cross-country champion, won by more than 100 yards as Mike Williamson of Thousand Oaks, 16th in the Kinney nationals, placed second in 9:25.2 and Dameworth placed third in 9:27.4.

“I wanted to run well here,” said Dameworth, the fourth-place finisher at the Kinney championships. “But I think the promoters blew this race out of proportion. They kept promoting it as a rematch of the Kinney championships. But I thought of it more like a reunion.”

Dameworth, who took 2 weeks off after the Kinney championships and had been training seriously for only a month before the Sunkist meet, added that he won’t be in great shape for several months.

“The season is going to be so long that I didn’t expect to run real fast here,” he said. “What I do in January is not real important compared to how I run in May and June.”

Hot-shooting Husky: It’s not often that North Hollywood’s Dana Jones is overshadowed by a teammate, but that happened last week when Ed Davis scored 51 points and grabbed 21 rebounds in the Huskies’ victories over Poly and Monroe.

“Different teams play us different ways,” North Hollywood Coach Steve Miller said. “And Poly and Monroe both packed the middle around Dana, which left Ed wide open for the outside shot.”

Davis, a 6-3 senior, scored 24 points against Poly and had 27 against Monroe.

“Ed’s strength is his shooting,” Miller said. “He’s a pure shooter. He’s not afraid to take the outside shot.”

Davis was forced to play center for the junior varsity last season, but this year he is back to his more natural forward position.

“We needed him to play as a post-up player last year,” Miller said of Davis, who is averaging 14.3 points and 6.1 rebounds. But he’s definitely more comfortable playing at the forward spot. Last year, he played with his back to the basket. This year, he’s facing it.”

Staff writers Steve Elling, Vince Kowalick and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.