NOTEBOOK : Gaels Coach Rips Back-to-Back Games after Losses to Loyola and Pepperdine

St. Mary’s basketball Coach Lynn Nance was unhappy about his team’s 65-60 loss to Pepperdine last Saturday night. It knocked the Gaels out of a first-place tie with the Waves in the West Coast Athletic Conference.

Nance was unhappier still with playing Loyola and Pepperdine, St. Mary’s toughest competition this year, on successive nights.

He contended that playing conference teams on successive nights has made the conference “the laughingstock of the West Coast” and is “a sad mistake.”

He may have been overstating his case, but he has a point.

Having to face Loyola Marymount, which almost always plays a running game, one night and coming back the next night against Pepperdine was hazardous for St. Mary’s.

Going into last week, the Gaels were tied for first with the Waves and the Lions. Going out, they were tied for second with Loyola, and Pepperdine was in sole possession of first place.

St. Mary’s, which normally plays a deliberate game and has one of the nation’s best defenses, played the Lions running game last week and beat them at it, 116-104.

But the victory took a lot out of the Gaels.

Neither of the team’s top two scorers, forwards Erick Newman and Robert Haugen, were up to par the next night against Pepperdine.

Newman hurt his back late in the game against Loyola while going in for a breakaway layup. According to St. Mary’s game notes, he was “fouled hard from behind by (Loyola’s) Tom Peabody and landed wrong, straining his back.”

Against the Lions, Newman scored 18 points. Against Pepperdine, he played just 17 minutes after picking up three quick fouls in the first half and did not score.

Haugen, who will never be nicknamed “Rapid Robert,” played just 20 minutes against the Waves and scored four points, a night after he had a career-high 37 against Loyola.

Nance said Haugen did not play much against Pepperdine because he “was playing very tired.” Nance said he also didn’t use him much because “we were in a catch-up situation and we needed as much quickness as we could get.”

He said that Newman suffered back spasms after he was injured and had no time to recover and that Haugen could have used a day of rest.

And playing back-to-back games doesn’t give a team time to prepare for the second team, Nance said.

Pepperdine Coach Tom Asbury, whose team will play at St. Mary’s on Friday night and at the University of San Diego on Saturday, agreed with Nance about playing conference games two nights in a row.

“It is tough,” Asbury said.

Schedule makers have long dictated that WCAC teams play two conference games within the same week, often with a day of rest between them, he said. The rationale, he said, is that “it doesn’t put anybody on the road two or three weeks in a row, to avoid playing too many straight road games.”

Conference games at Santa Clara and the University of San Francisco for the last few years have been played one night after the other, he added. There are more back-to-back games this year than in the past, but he said he thinks the scheduling was “a practical, sincere effort to keep students in the classroom an extra day.” He said cutting costs probably had something to do with it also. Asbury added that conference schedule makers don’t try to figure out which teams will be stronger.

He thinks, however, that conference officials involved in making up the schedule have begun to see that games on successive nights are impractical and “have taken some steps to rectify the situation.”

With its victory over St. Mary’s, ranked 18th nationally last week by United Press International, Pepperdine drew attention on national television Sunday.

On the CBS telecast of the Georgetown-Villanova game, color commentator Billy Packer said Pepperdine might be one of the Cinderella teams to watch out for in the NCAA Tournament. Packer’s other candidates are Virginia, Ball State and Texas El Paso.

It may not have been evident it you were trying to get a starting time last year at one of the four Los Angeles municipal golf courses on the Westside, but fewer rounds were played on them than in the year before.

Though more than a million rounds were played on the city’s 13 courses for the second straight year, the Westside courses--Holmby Park, Penmar and the nine- and 18-hole courses at Rancho Park--recorded a drop in play.

Holmby fell to 4,231 rounds from 4,403, Rancho’s nine-hole layout to 60,504 from 65,598, Rancho’s 18-hole course to 127,969 from 130,113 and Penmar to 119,931 from 125,116, an overall decline of 12,595 rounds.

Reasons for the decline included construction of irrigation systems at the Rancho courses, rain and cold last December, tournaments and the infestation of Penmar by pests called nematodes that turned the greens to dusty browns for a while.

The 1988 total of 1,184,585 rounds was still the second-highest number for all municipal courses after the 1987 record of 1,198,145.

The No. 44 jersey of former Pepperdine All-American basketball player Maureen Formico will be retired when the Waves play host to Santa Clara at 7:30 p.m. Feb. 25 at Firestone Fieldhouse.

Formico, of Los Gatos, is Pepperdine’s career scoring leader. From 1982 through the 1985-86 season, she scored 2,190 points, an average of 19.2 for 114 games.

Offensive lineman Kevin Kelly of Santa Monica High School and Beverly Hills High wide receiver Michael Moore have been named to the 30-man South squad for the 38th annual Shrine all-star football game. The game, a benefit for the Shriners hospital for crippled children in Los Angeles, will be played July 29 at the Rose Bowl.

Athletes chosen to represent Los Angeles City high schools on National Women in Sports Day last Saturday included Westsiders Claudia Jones of Crenshaw High, Telana Courseault of Dorsey, Aida Crosthwaite of Fairfax, Jodi Steinberg of Hamilton, Elizabeth Aguayo of Hollywood, Erica Badran-Grycan of Palisades, Shaney Fink of University, Stacy Pierce of Venice, Leticia Flores of Westchester and Jacqueline Pleasant of Westside Alternative.