PREP REVIEW : Nelson Is Back With Laguna Hills . . for Now

Pat Nelson said Sunday that he has rejoined the Laguna Hills High School basketball team after sitting out two games because of a dispute with Coach Dave Brown over playing time and productivity.

But Nelson said he might not be with the Hawks for long.

Nelson, the team’s leading scorer and only returning starter from last season, said he will be ready for the Hawks’ game Tuesday at Estancia, but he is considering transferring to Pacific Coast League rival Trabuco Hills.

“I will play in the Estancia game and see what’s going on,” said Nelson, a 6-foot-4 senior forward who transferred from Estancia to Laguna Hills after his freshman year. “There are still a lot of problems between me and my coach.

“Unless things work out in the Estancia game, I’m out of here.”

Brown, who benched Nelson in the third quarter of a 55-50 loss to Estancia Dec. 8, is in his first year at Laguna Beach after leading Fountain Valley to seven Sunset League titles in 20 years.

Nelson, who averaged 19 points in four games this season, quit the team and missed two games--losses to Orange Lutheran and Corona del Mar in the Irvine World News Tournament.

“Obviously, I don’t want to see this thing get too overblown,” Brown said. “The basic idea was that offensively we wanted to make sure he understood the philosophy and how we wanted him to play. Hopefully, we have communicated that to him.”

Nelson, who has been nursing a sore ankle, said he doesn’t fit into Brown’s deliberate offense.

“Laguna Hills isn’t used to the way Brown coaches,” Nelson said. “We usually like to run and shoot. It’s more my style of play versus his style of play. It’s a lack of communication.”

Nelson currently lives with his mother, Kathy, in Laguna Hills. He said he would move in with his father, Steve, in Santa Margarita if he decides to transfer to Trabuco Hills.

Weight a second: After tipping the scales at Savanna last season, Mustapha Abdi has been tipping in a few more shots this season with Huntington Beach.

Abdi went on a diet last summer after transferring from Savanna to Huntington Beach, cutting his playing weight from 194 pounds to 183.

“I cut back on all the sweets, the cakes and candy, all the good stuff,” said Abdi, a 6-4 junior. “I’m much quicker and I move better on the floor. Last season, I couldn’t run the floor very well.”

As Abdi’s weight has decreased, his productivity has increased. He has averaged 26 points and 16 rebounds for the Oilers (4-4). Last season, he averaged 17.7 points and was the only sophomore named to The Times’ All-County team.

Bill Clark, Southern Section administrator, said the 1989 football playoffs were one of the most successful in the section’s history in terms of attendance. The nine divisional championship games drew an estimated 80,000 fans, the most since 1979, Clark said.

“It was a good year,” he said. “There’s been a revival of interest in high school football and we had some great matchups in the finals.”

It’s the time of year when college football coaches begin courting the top high school players in the nation, and Orange County players have been drawing plenty of interest.

Hartwell Brown, a first-team all-county defensive lineman at Los Alamitos, is picking from a list that includes USC, UCLA, California, Stanford and Nebraska.

Los Alamitos Coach John Barnes said Brown’s size (6-fee-4, 240 pounds) and Scholastic Aptitude Test scores (1,410 out of 1,600) appeal to recruiters.

Barnes said Nebraska recruiters noticed Brown while watching game film of Todd Gragnano, a second-team all-county selection at quarterback.

“They said Brown was the best they had seen at his position in the nation,” Barnes said.

Gragnano is being recruited heavily by Nebraska and Big Eight champion Colorado.

Alabama and Oregon are pursuing Mater Dei quarterback Danny O’Neil. The Monarchs’ Ryan Motherway, a 6-4, 255-pound offensive lineman, has drawn interest from Cal, Stanford, UCLA and USC.

Terry Henigan will resume his position as head football coach at Irvine High next year. Rick Curtis, who was a co-coach along with Henigan this season, will return as an assistant. Irvine experimented with co-head coaches the last two seasons and finished a combined 9-11. Henigan said he and Curtis decided at the end of the season to return to the traditional format.

Curtis also will become the Irvine boys’ golf coach this spring, replacing Craig Elliott.

Jeff Seckman, in his first season as Santa Margarita girls’ basketball coach, had a hard time putting the Eagles’ 48-44 upset of Gahr last Monday into perspective.

One can’t blame Seckman, who moved to Santa Margarita from Wheeling, W.Va., this year.

In fact, he had to be informed what a big victory he had scored over Gahr, the 4-AA’s top-ranked team, in the opening round of the Brea-Olinda Lady Cat tournament.

“That is what everybody was telling me,” Seckman said.

The Eagles are 5-2 with a starting lineup of three sophomores and two juniors. The school opened two years ago and does not have a senior class.