THE HIGH SCHOOLS : Losses Whisk Granada Hills From Lofty Perch

High-flying for weeks, the Granada Hills High basketball team has come back to earth since North Valley League play began.

After blowing out several teams and posting big offensive numbers en route to a 15-2 start, Granada Hills (16-5, 5-3 in league play) has lost three of its past four games.

“We haven’t played up to our capabilities and we’ve played some good teams,” Coach Bob Johnson said when asked to explain the Highlanders’ recent funk. “We’re not shooting very well. We only made nine of 23 layups against Taft and our free-throw shooting has been terrible all season. We’re shooting something like 56% from the line.”

Although Granada Hills lost to Taft, 74-71, Thursday, after leading by 13 at halftime, Johnson points out that the Highlanders have not been blown out of a game this season.

Granada Hills’ five losses have been by a total of 16 points, including an 89-86 overtime loss to Cleveland last week.

“We’ve been in every game,” Johnson said. “We just haven’t had the breaks go our way.

“They say good teams are also lucky teams, so maybe we’re due for some breaks.”

Sticking to his guns: Reseda clinched a share of the West Valley League basketball title with a victory over El Camino Real on Thursday.

However, Coach Jeff Halpern is as critical as ever about the City Section’s decision to move Reseda from the Mid-Valley to the West Valley League this season.

“I still don’t think it was the right thing to do,” Halpern said. “I still think Grant was the (3-A Division) team that should have been moved. That’s my alma mater, and they’re going to scream when they hear me say that, but they should have been moved up, not us.”

Grant has won 29 consecutive league games, including 10 this season, and is 16-2 overall.

A member of the 3-A Valley Pac-8 Conference last season, Reseda replaced Canoga Park in the Northwest Valley Conference--which comprises the 4-A North Valley and the 3-A West Valley leagues--this season.

After opening league play with a 1-2 record, Reseda has won three in a row and four of its past five, yet Halpern remains steadfast in his belief that the Regents should be playing in a conference that is exclusively 3-A.

“I’ve been pleasantly surprised,” Halpern said of Reseda’s success. “We’re lacking a big man in the middle and we’re lacking a good outside shooter, but we’ve managed to win. . . . But the (West Valley) league is just down overall this season. San Fernando is way, way down.

“If they had one of their typical teams, they’d kick the . . . out of us.”

Vulnerability: Rebounding, or lack of it, has been Reseda’s Achilles’ heel this season.

The Regents have been outrebounded in almost every game, according to Halpern, but the third-year coach attributes only some of that to the fact that Reseda’s front line measures 6-foot-3, 6-1 and 6-0.

“We just do not board well,” Halpern said. “Anybody with a little bit of size has had a field day against us. That’s not a knock against us, just a fact of life.

“I think (rebounding) has become a lost art. It’s a combination of mental focus and physical follow-through, and there aren’t a lot of kids who do it real well at the high school level any more.”

Kudos: Jim Woodard is doing another fine job of coaching the Taft basketball team.

The Toreadors were expected to finish third--behind Cleveland and Granada Hills--in the North Valley League, but Taft (14-6, 6-2) is second in the league standings with two games remaining.

The Toreadors have won three of their past four games, including a pair of victories over Granada Hills.

The ability to win close games has been instrumental in Taft’s success; the Toreadors have won three of four league games decided by four points or less.

Last year, Taft had a streak during league play in which it lost four consecutive games by four points or less.

Trivia time: With a 13-0 overall record and a 9-0 mark in Valley Conference play, the Chatsworth girls’ soccer team appears poised to win its third consecutive City Section title and its second under Coach Steve Berk.

Name the other sports in which Berk’s teams have won City titles?

Staying home: Dave Hartman of Canyon High was a notable absentee at the U. S. Junior (age 14-19) World cross-country trials in Tallahassee, Fla., on Saturday.

Hartman, who finished third in the 1990 Kinney national high school cross-country championships in December, had planned to run but withdrew for health and other reasons. He is recovering from a case of bronchitis that hampered him in the Sunkist Invitational last month.

If Hartman had qualified for the national team--which will run in the World Junior championships in Antwerp, Belgium, on March 24--he would miss Canyon’s dual track and field meet against Antelope Valley this season, a meet that could decide the Golden League title.

Hartman has visited Arizona and will take a recruiting trip to Wisconsin.

Trivia answer: Cross-country and volleyball. Berk coached Chatsworth to City championships in boys’ cross-country in 1978, girls’ cross-country in 1982 and boys’ volleyball in 1981, ’84 and ’89.