Santa Clara Is Dizzy Over State Basketball Playoffs : Celebration: For the second consecutive year, a small Catholic high school has a shot at the Divison IV state championship. A noisy send-off fires up the team.

A contagious fever swept across the Santa Clara High School campus in Oxnard on Thursday, sending 720 giddy teen-agers home early and causing officials to cancel all of Friday’s classes.

It was basketball fever.

For the second year in a row, the small Catholic school’s basketball team has beaten back all of its Southern California rivals to win a shot at the Division IV state prep basketball championship.

Santa Clara won last year’s state title. This year’s season finale will match the defending champions Friday night against Northern California’s top small school--Vanden High of Fairfield.

So many Santa Clara students plan to travel north by car, bus and plane to watch the 8 p.m. game at the Oakland Coliseum that school officials decided to shut down the campus.

And they dismissed everyone early on Thursday so the 14-member team could fly north in mid-afternoon to rest for the big game. Sports league rules prohibit athletes from leaving before school is out for the day.

The thought of an Oxnard school winning back-to-back state basketball championships left the Saviers Road campus in an excited daze.

Shouts of “Repeat! Repeat!” echoed through the Santa Clara gymnasium as the student body gathered Thursday morning to give the team a noisy send-off. Students watched reverently as players received flowers and balloons and kisses from Sister Anne Eugene, the principal.

Despite the hot gym, sophomore Steven Klein wore his heavy blue-and-gold football letterman’s jacket in honor of the cage team.

“They’re gonna win the state championship again. I’m sure of it,” said Klein, 16. “But I’m going to be proud of them no matter what happens.”

Outside the gym, cheerleader Cyndee Corral, also 16, practiced a dance her group will perform at Friday’s game: “You Can’t Touch Us.”

“Santa Clara’s such a small school that everyone knows everyone here,” she explained as her friends cheered her on. “Everyone’s proud of being here.”

Corral interrupted her impromptu routine to run to the side of Shon Tarver, the 6-foot-5 senior guard who has been Santa Clara’s key player during its 44-game win streak.

Tarver, 17, has averaged more than 31 points per game this year. Last week, he scored 40 points against Santa Maria’s St. Joseph High School to lead the Oxnard school to the Southern California Regional Division IV title.

Tarver grinned shyly as Corral gave him a hug and a kiss.

That happens a lot to the “Big Man on Campus,” according to Taryn Tarver, Shon’s 15-year-old freshman sister.

“Five of my friends have asked me to set them up with him. They make him cookies and stuff. Liz Ortiz sends him cookies before every game. He loves them.”

Taryn Tarver is one of 112 students who managed to reserve seats on two buses that were scheduled to leave about 6 a.m. Friday for Oakland. They will return about 5 a.m. Saturday.

School secretary Joanne Kincaid said

twice that many students wanted to go, but the Greyhound bus strike made it impossible to line up more buses.

Other students were begging for rides from friends’ parents on Thursday.

“My mom and dad and sister and I will go in our tank, our ’75 Olds Cutlass,” said Dawnte Anderson, 14, a freshman. “It’s the kind of car you can fit a lot of people in.”

Monica Maestas, also 14, said her grandparents from Garden Grove will join her family for the ride to the Oakland game. She predicted that many students from other Oxnard schools also may make the 380-mile trip.

“You always see a lot of people from town at our games,” Maestas said. “You see school jackets from Channel Islands and Oxnard, Rio Mesa, Hueneme.”

Students at Oxnard’s public high schools said they are pulling for Santa Clara.

“I’m rooting for them. I’ve got a lot of friends who go there. If it was going to be on TV, I’d be watching,” said Brandon Webber, 15, a ninth-grader at Oxnard High School.

Ruperto G. Cisneros, principal of Oxnard High, said he will also be cheering for Santa Clara--even though it beat his school in a non-league practice game earlier this season. “We hung real tough the first three quarters, then Tarver took over,” Cisneros said.

“We’re very proud that a school in our community was able to reach that level of success. There’s a lot of community pride in what they’ve done.”

At Oxnard City Hall, Mayor Nao Takusugi agreed.

“Santa Clara’s one of the greatest ambassadors of goodwill for the city of Oxnard,” said Takusugi, who has attended several of the school’s games this season. “They bring recognition to the city. We’re behind them 100%. Win or lose, we’ll be honoring them.”

Oxnard merchant Jessie Lucio said City Hall presentations are becoming the norm for Santa Clara.

“I think the City Council almost has a spot reserved for them in their chambers,” said Lucio, manager of the Sports Zone sportswear shop at the Center Point shopping mall.

Lucio said there has been a run on blue-and-gold Santa Clara sportswear since the school made the playoffs.

“I’m out of hats and down to my last three shirts,” he said. “I’m hurting. I’ve got customers calling all the way from Newbury Park and Thousand Oaks for them.”

He said he is counting on Santa Clara to win. He added that he has already ordered shirts imprinted with “Back to Back Champions” that he hopes to put on sale next week.

Oxnard sports observers said that while the city basks in the Santa Clara team’s glow, the unusual winning streak is really a reflection of the work of Coach Lou Cvijanovich, 63. He has worked at the school since 1958.

“He tries to schedule schools of higher caliber in practice games. He teaches these kids how to be men,” said John W. Borchard Sr., an Oxnard citrus rancher whose family arrived in Ventura County in 1860.

Although Borchard played high school basketball at Villanova Prep in Ojai in the late 1920s, he attends most of Santa Clara’s games.

“I’d be in Oakland on Friday if my wife hadn’t scheduled an important social engagement in Los Angeles that night,” said Borchard, 76.

Leo Berry, a 1963 Santa Clara graduate who heads the school’s booster club, said Santa Clara’s spirit has been building since Cvijanovich, known as “Mr. C” on campus, arrived at the school.

“It’s a fever that started when he came,” said Berry, 44. “You see it at the games when you look around and there are former students and former athletes in the crowd.

“It’s a fever that he started and never stopped.”