THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Alemany Lets Dice Fly and Comes Up With Championship

Hickory, dickory, dock,

The kid looks at the clock ,

The clock strikes :10,

He drills one again,

That kid can shoot the rock . . .

Sure, it isn’t as ribald as one of comedian Andrew Dice Clay’s dirty ditties, but this isn’t the same Dice Man. However, if you’re looking for shock value--and if you’re a member of the opposing team--Richard Dice of Alemany is capable of raising a few hairs.

Dice, a 6-foot-3, 185-pound sophomore swingman, was named the most valuable player of the Thousand Oaks tournament after leading Alemany to a 56-54 overtime victory over Agoura on Friday night.

In three tournament games, Dice scored 17, 28 and 15 points, all game highs, to lead the Indians to what rates as a rather surprising championship.

He was there in the clutch too. Dice Man was the Ice Man, clinching the tournament championship with a pair of free throws with 20 seconds left in overtime as the Indians built a four-point lead.

All this from a 15-year-old?

Sure, but be advised that he is a two-year starter. As a freshman, first-year Coach Bill (Rocky) Moore went with Dice over more experienced personnel. Moore insists that he wasn’t simply building for the future.

“He deserved to start,” Moore said. “He had that mental toughness last year. And that’s what you need to play that young.”

The Moore corps spent most of last season in retreat mode but seemingly has recovered.

“(The championship) was a big win for our program,” Moore said. “We’re getting it turned around.”

As recently as three years ago, Alemany won a Del Rey League title, but things then took a pronounced downturn. In 1988-89, Alemany was a wretched 3-17.

The Agoura victory was Alemany’s third in a row, raising its record to 5-3.

One that got away: In fishing, when one casts off, the odds are pretty good that the hook will come back empty. In basketball, rockets from long range are landed about as often as 10-pound trout.

Sometimes, though, a team comes home with a stringer full of keepers. Agoura, for example, made 11 of 19 three-point attempts in its 88-73 semifinal tournament win over Thousand Oaks on Thursday night.

More often than not, though, counting on long-range shots leaves a team, well, reeling.

A day later, in its loss to Alemany in the tournament final, Agoura made six of 19 three-point attempts.

Welcome back--now pack: In Hawaiian, “aloha” can mean either hello or goodby. Andre Chevalier has heard both--in English--over the past few days.

Chevalier returned to the Cleveland basketball team Wednesday, scoring nine points in a 74-57 win over Crossroads in his first appearance of the season.

He missed the Cavaliers’ first five games while awaiting a ruling on a grade-change request, one on which his athletic eligibility hinged.

Chevalier, a 6-foot senior and three-year letterman, received the academic thumbs up early last week and the athletic high fives Wednesday night.

“I got in a lot of time on the court with him,” fellow guard Eddie Hill said. “It worked out real well.”

Chevalier, who plays at point or off-guard and is perhaps the team’s best defensive player, won’t have much time to savor his return to the Cavalier gym.

Cleveland (3-3) will leave today for Hawaii, where the team will play in the Iolani McDonald’s Classic, which opens Tuesday. Included in the 16-team field are eight teams from the Islands and longtime local nemesis Fairfax. Cleveland is guaranteed four games, Coach Marc Paez said.

If this trip turns out as well as the Cavaliers’ last, the team will bring home more than a nice tan. Last season, Cleveland won the 32-team Las Vegas Holiday Classic, catapulting the team to a No. 2 ranking in the state by Cal-Hi Sports.

End of the dunking donut: After a while, it ceased being a minor point of embarrassment and became something of a team joke.

Despite being ranked among the best teams in the Valley all of last season, Taft played its entire schedule without recording a dunk.

No slams, no jams, no ma’am.

Cornell Hill finally ended the drought with a slam in last Tuesday’s win over Roosevelt. Hill had several dunks while playing on the junior varsity in 1988-89, Coach Jim Woodard said, but seemed in no hurry to be the first varsity player in more than a year to throw down a rim-rattler.

It had been so long, it almost sounds like Woodard now prefers the sure two points.

“He had a couple of chances early on and he just layed it in,” said Woodard of Hill, a 6-1 guard. “I told him if he didn’t want to slam it that it was OK with me.”

Add Taft: As tournament fate would have it, the Toreadors defeated Venice twice in a span of four days last week. Taft beat the Gondoliers in a nonleague game Monday (54-44) and in a Hamilton tournament game Thursday (60-49).

Sound a little repetitive? Wait, there’s more. If both teams win their respective first-round games of the Eagle Rock tournament, they will face each other again, on Dec. 27.

Can it hurt to play the same team so often, even if you win? You bet: Woodard is a Venice alumnus.

Initiation rites: Kim Galbreath is in her first season as girls’ basketball coach at Oak Park and already she is experiencing one of the campus’ time-honored traditions.

Last week, Galbreath--just as the football team seems close to doing every once in a while--ran out of players.

Oak Park started the season with nine players but lost two to academic ineligibility. Against Westlake on Wednesday, one Oak Park player was injured in the second quarter and two fouled out in the third quarter.

For those of you scoring at home, that left four for the final 10 minutes of an 81-33 loss.

The really interesting part? Oak Park outscored the Warriors, 12-10, in the final quarter.

“It was very polite,” Galbreath said. “It wasn’t like they rubbed our nose in it.”