Haskell Has Brought His Tough Methods to Savanna : Basketball: Coach who played at Western for demanding Greg Hoffman returns tonight to face his mentor.

Greg Haskell couldn’t figure this new basketball coach, the one who walked into the Western High School gym that day in the fall of 1983.

Before long, this new guy had Haskell and the other Western players diving for loose balls until their elbows and knees were bleeding.

This new guy was 27-year-old Greg Hoffman, fresh from his days as an assistant coach under Katella’s Tom Danley, one of the more demanding and successful coaches in Orange County.

Hoffman screamed at his players in practice. He screamed during games. He insisted on man-to-man defense, although the players were accustomed to playing a zone.

“He asked us to cut our hair and got us to play harder than we imagined we could,” Haskell said. “He just pummeled us.”

Haskell was far from a star on that team. He was a senior, and it was only his second year of basketball, his first on the varsity. His sport was football.

He showed promise as a defensive back, but his career ended when he underwent bone graft surgery on his shin as a sophomore. The surgery sidelined him for more than a year, and although doctors warned him not to play basketball, he did anyway.

“Every time he practiced more than half an hour, his leg blew up twice its size,” Hoffman said. “He would sit in the training room with an ice pack on it until his dad came to pick him up. But he played every game for us.”

Haskell, 6-foot-2 forward, came off the bench, and could set a mean backside screen. He made darn sure he got to every loose ball. But Western ended with a 9-12 record.

“He took to heart what I did,” Hoffman said.

Hoffman started Haskell in the senior’s final game. He played almost every minute of the Pioneers’ upset of league-champion Savanna.

“He did that,” Haskell said, “because he knew I wouldn’t cheat him.”

Marlon Watson couldn’t figure this new basketball coach, the one who walked into the Savanna High School gym last summer. He had played for three coaches in three years, but none as tough as this guy.

Before long, the new coach had Watson and his teammates diving for loose balls until their elbows and knees were bleeding.

“A typical practice is living hell,” Watson said.

The new guy was 25-year-old Greg Haskell, fresh from nearly five seasons as an assistant coach under Western’s Greg Hoffman.

“I spawned him,” Hoffman said. “Everything those kids at Savanna are going through this year, he went through his senior year with me.”

Haskell is the youngest boys’ basketball coach in the county, taking over the program last spring when Kevin Kiernan left to coach La Quinta High.

Haskell had planned to be an assistant to Steve Keith at Irvine High, a job that would have kept him close to Laguna Niguel, where he and his wife, Sylvia, have lived since July.

But when the Savanna job opened, Athletic Director Tom Voigt called Hoffman for advice. Hoffman dropped a few names, then paused.

“I’d be cutting my own throat if I let Greg loose in the same league as us,” Hoffman said. “But then I told Voigt to hire him anyway, because he was the hardest-working guy I know. I told them they would be fools not to hire him.”

Not everyone can play basketball for Haskell. Watson and shooting guard Tobie Priest are the only varsity players remaining from the start of summer play. Haskell promoted freshmen, sophomores and juniors to replace players who quit.

“I can be Attila the Hun, but I also can explain to them why they can’t give in,” Haskell said. “I’m sensitive to them, because I went through this as a player.”

Not everyone is a fan of Haskell’s approach.

His sideline antics--clenched teeth, constant pacing and dressing down of players for foolish mistakes--have raised an eyebrow or two. He’s vocal, yet he says he has never received a technical foul.

“Sometimes he’ll come down hard on me in a game,” Watson said. “And some people have complained, saying he verbally abused me. But I think that’s what a good coach should do. Coach may not think I like playing for him, but I do.”

Said Hoffman: “Greg Haskell is very genuine. This is not an act for him on the sideline. It’s him. You can take it or leave it. It’s what he is.

“He’s a wild man, but he cares about those kids. He doesn’t hit them or curse at them. He gets on their ass, though.”

Sometimes, the fans get on him . Haskell, on occasion, will hear a voice ring out from the Savanna stands: “Hey buddy, why don’t you go back to Western?”

Tonight, he will.

Savanna (10-5, 1-0 in league) plays at Western (10-4, 1-0) in an Orange League game.

Both teams believe in vicious man-to-man defense, pressing and diving for loose balls. Both run a motion offense. Both programs have kids who play with more toughness than talent, yet both are contenders for the league title.

“What we do is not a spectacle,” Haskell said. “The reason we cut our hair short and dive for balls during warm-ups is to let other teams know they’re dealing with some intense people.”

Haskell draws his intensity from his childhood days in Anaheim. He was a reckless kid--jumping trash cans with his bike and doing flips off folding chairs, activities that broke his left shin bone twice as a 5-year-old.

The shin never regained its full strength. By his sophomore year, doctors found a benign tumor on his shin. They removed it, and replaced part of his shin bone with a piece of hip bone.

Haskell loved football and wanted to follow his brother, Rick, who played center on the football team at Golden West in the late 1980s.

His coaching influences began with Hoffman, who taught him the game, and stretch as far away as Bloomington, Ind., where he attended a coaching clinic conducted by Indiana’s Bob Knight in 1987.

“It was eight hours of intense note-taking,” said Haskell, who, along with Hoffman, regard Knight’s philosophies as gospel.

Haskell coached at each lower level in Western’s program from 1986 to 1991, as well as one-year stints as an assistant at Orange Coast College and Lakewood Mayfair High.

“I believe that as a coach, you are an amalgamation of who you have worked for,” Haskell said. “I stay in touch with Hoffman, (Orange Coast assistant Herb) Livsey and (head coach) Tandy Gillis.

“(Western sophomore coach) John Rogers taught me a lot. I spent two months with Steve Keith. I don’t know of anyone my age who has had a chance to work with so many great coaches.”

Haskell, a few credits shy of his teaching certificate at National University in Irvine, is a substitute teacher at Savanna, and works as a bill collector for his father, Brian, a vacuum cleaner distributor.

But coaching, Haskell said, is his future.

“I hope I can give something back to the sport through coaching,” Haskell said, “because I did a lot of damage to it as a player.”

At the end of the 1983-84 basketball season, Hoffman created the Greg S. Haskell award--a plaque presented annually to Western’s hardest-working player. The inscription reads: “All out, all the time.”

Haskell was the first winner, and some of the school’s best players have won it since, including Tom Barraza and Sam Sabbara.

“The first few years we gave out that award, my buddies ripped on me like crazy,” Haskell said.

Haskell presents the award at Western’s annual banquet. He’s a little nervous about it this year. After all, he’s treading on enemy turf now, right?

“It will be a little odd,” he said, smiling. “But it’s a very sentimental thing to me. And Western will always be home for me--as long as he (Hoffman) is there.”