Man to Man Now Preferred Defensive Set

After two-plus weeks of basketball, several coaches are of the opinion that teams are going back to basics.

In recent years, defenses have been tinkered with, ripped apart and reconstructed, resulting in hybrid schemes with names such as the diamond and one, triangle and two or box and one. Sounds like a lecture on carpentry.

Plain ol’ hard-nosed play is making a comeback. The man to man seems to be the defense of choice at many schools.

“Coaches are followers, like anybody else,” Taft Coach Jim Woodard said. “Match-up (zones) were all the rage for a while. But coaches go to clinics and learn how to beat that stuff.”

Woodard said that Taft has seen the zone defense once all season. North Hollywood Coach Steve Miller said he can recall facing a zone defense once this season in eight games, despite the mismatches that his talented team create.

“As much as anything, I think coaches want to make other teams run their man-to-man offense,” Miller said.

Chatsworth Coach Sandy Greentree said that during his team’s two-hour practices, the Chancellors spend “an hour and 50 minutes” running and attacking the man to man.

In Chatsworth’s 61-52 upset of Kennedy on Wednesday, Chatsworth stayed in its man-to-man defense the entire game.

What comes around, goes around.

HOPPIN’ MAD

Miller would like to present evidence on his own behalf concerning his team’s 111-28 victory over Sylmar last week. Of the charges leveled by Sylmar players that the Huskies pressed despite holding a huge lead, Miller steadfastly pleads not guilty.

Miller said the Huskies stayed in a half-court, man-to-man defense for the entire second half.

“I’m not proud of scoring 100 points,” he said. “It doesn’t turn me on unless the other team has about 80.”

The North Hollywood starters played the first five minutes of the third quarter and the last five men on the 13-player roster accounted for 20 of the 27 points scored in the fourth quarter, he said.

“This makes me look bad, like I run it up, and I’m not like that,” he said. “I’m not for cutthroat basketball. This was totally an accident because they were so inept. They couldn’t get the ball across the half-court line.”

Sylmar Coach Alan Shaw agreed that the Spartans had a lot of trouble working against the Huskies’ half-court defense. But, while Shaw hasn’t lost any sleep over the lopsided loss, some of the Spartans have.

“You would hope that when a team is up by 60 points that maybe they would go into a zone (defense) and not run the ball (on offense) every time they get it,” Shaw said. “(The loss is) causing some problems. It was really crushing for these guys to come to school after an 83-point loss.”

MR. MOBILITY

Alemany’s Richard Dice may be the only player in the region who does not play a particular position. He’s played inside and he’s played outside. He’s been the center and the point guard. And he’s been consistent.

Dice (6-foot-2), one of the area’s best football players, leads the team in almost every category. He is averaging 23 points and 13 rebounds and leads Alemany with 13 three-point baskets. His versatility has given Coach Kurt Keller many options.

“We try to create a mismatch with him,” Keller said. “If they put a small guy on him, we’ll put (Dice) inside and pound it in to him. If they put a big guy on him, we send him outside and let him shoot.

“He’s gonna carry the load, no question about it.”

QUOTEBOOK

Hart Coach Greg Herrick on the Indians’ 45% shooting percentage after eight games: “I never believe in telling kids, ‘Don’t shoot,’ because you never know when they might have to make one. But when the coach can beat everyone on the team in a game of H-O-R-S-E, you’re in trouble.”

SAD NEWS

While some basketball teams might rejoice at a 4-2 record, the standards at Santa Clara High, where the Saints have won two state titles in the past three years, are a little different.

Veteran Coach Lou Cvijanovich called it “the slowest start we’ve ever had,” but attributes much of the team’s sluggishness to off-court news. On the day before Thanksgiving, Cvijanovich received a call at school informing him that the mother of forward Chris Cole had died.

Cole, the Southern Section Division IV player of the year as a junior, is Santa Clara’s steadiest player, a team leader though he averaged just 9.8 points per game last season.

The funeral was on Nov. 30, just two days before the Saints entered the Simi Valley tournament to open the season. Cvijanovich said the whole team and “half the school” showed up to pay respects to Cole’s family.

In the tournament, the Saints uncharacteristically lost a game at the buzzer to Simi Valley and one game in overtime to North Hollywood.

The team will wear black patches on the left shoulder of their uniforms this season in memory of Cole’s mother.

LEARN FROM THE BEST

Saugus’ basketball team figures to be a good pick to win the Golden League, as Coach John Clark is fielding one of his more complete teams in recent years. Throw in the sentiment of Clark’s retirement, effective at the end of the season, and the Centurions figure to be playing with added fire.

But if Saugus wants to make good on all that promise, certain things have to improve--such as the free-throw shooting of forward Chris Hernandez. Hernandez, the team’s best leaper and rebounder, has had trouble at the line.

Clark recognizes that and, as such, has taken special measures for Hernandez. Every day in practice, Clark says, Hernandez works alone on his free throws with first-year assistant Ron Stapp.

Improvement should be forthcoming. Stapp, who graduated from Saugus in 1985, is second in school history in free-throw percentage (85%).

DEJA VU

For the second year in a row, a relatively unknown junior from Ventura County made a name for herself at the national level at the Kinney meet.

Last year, Veronica Barajas of Channel Islands surprised aficionados with her fifth-place finish in the girls’ race, defeating Agoura’s Deena Drossin, among others.

On Saturday, Maribella Aparicio of Fillmore made her mark with a seventh-place effort.

SAVED BY THE BELL

Royal goalie Carolyn Rahn looked as if she had gone 15 rounds in the boxing ring last Wednesday, following a 2-0 loss to the Palos Verdes soccer team.

“Right now, she has a black eye, almost swollen shut and a concussion,” Royal Coach Marty Berna said. “She plays goalie without regard for her body.”

Rahn suffered the injuries when she was kicked in the head while making a save. But she hasn’t been beaten very often as Royal has gone 4-2. Counting four additional victories this summer, when the Highlanders won the L.A. Games tournament, Rahn has given up just four goals in 10 games.

Rahn’s development as a goalie has been rapid. She took up soccer only two years ago after playing field hockey for a number of years. “She is just a natural,” Berna said.

COMINGS AND GOINGS

With the help of the Canoga Park High Booster Club and a few last-minute fund-raisers, the Canoga Park basketball team will be heading to a Las Vegas tournament after all.

Last week, Coach Jeff Davis feared that the team would have to pull out of the tournament because of lack of funds. But the booster club added $600 to the kitty last week and now the Hunters are just $1,000 short of their projected $2,500 goal. The accumulated funds have paid the air fare, but everything else is still up in the air.

“We’ll get there now, I just don’t know where we’ll stay or what we’ll eat,” Davis said.

NO STRESS HERE

Little more than a month after undergoing quadruple bypass heart surgery, Thousand Oaks girls’ basketball Coach Chuck Brown wondered how he would handle the stress of coaching in game situations.

Brown had little to worry about last week as the Lancers swept to the championship of the Santa Ana Valley tournament, winning three games by a combined score of 237-97.

But his basketball team is also doing its part to help his rehabilitation. The Southern Section I-A champion last year, Thousand Oaks has been bolstered this year by forward Marion Jones, a recent transfer from Rio Mesa. Jones is averaging 21 points and nine rebounds, matching senior point guard Michelle Palmisano for the team lead in both categories.

Jones’ presence makes it unlikely that the Lancers will see the box-and-one defense teams have used over the past two years in an attempt to slow down Palmisano. “If someone tries to run a box and one against us, we have three other players ready to score,” Brown said.

MEN AT WORK

When Southern Section administrator Dean Crowley helped arrange to get Vermont High of Victoria, Australia, into last week’s Thousand Oaks boys’ basketball tournament, he told tournament officials that the other teams in the field could expect some easy wins.

Instead, the Aussies came within three points of beating longtime Southern Section power St. Monica for the tournament title. And among Vermont’s victims was host Thousand Oaks. It was Showtime, Australian style, as the Vultures crushed the Lancers, 64-45, in Friday night’s semifinals. Vermont’s outstanding transition game proved effective in beating a fine Hart team, 64-62, and in stopping Hueneme, 73-49.

Still jet-lagged from their long journey from Australia and tired from playing in the San Bernardino and Thousand Oaks tournaments back to back, the Vultures blew a 14-point, fourth-quarter lead to St. Monica on Saturday. But it still wasn’t a bad performance, considering it is not even basketball season back home.

CANADIAN VACATION

The Chaminade girls’ basketball team found out that not only the rules are different when you play internationally, as the Eagles did last week in the Jasper High tournament in Edmonton, Alberta. The schools are too.

“The facilities were unbelievable,” Chaminade Coach Lisa Magorien said. “They had three gyms and an indoor, heated swimming pool. There was even a zoo in the middle of the school.”

On the court, Chaminade went 3-1 in pool play behind Maria Costa, and finished fourth overall when it lost to Menlo Atherton, the only other American team in the field. The Eagles’ other loss was a 70-69 defeat to a Canadian team on the first day of the tournament. Chaminade arrived in Edmonton at 1:30 a.m., had to be at opening ceremonies at 10 a.m. and then played at 3:45 p.m.

Off the court, the Eagles went tobogganing and got to shop and ice-skate at the West Edmonton Mall, the largest shopping center in the world when it was built in 1986.

“Some of our kids had never been to the snow and had never even been out of California, so it was quite an experience,” Magorien said.

David Coulson, Vince Kowalick and staff writers Steve Elling, Paige A. Leech, Brian Murphy and John Ortega contributed to this notebook.