Taft’s Seeding Helps Coach’s Temper Grow

Jim Woodard of Taft High, one of the more even-tempered guys around, has endured his share of ludicrous moments in an 11-year basketball coaching career.

The Taft boys’ coach usually rolls his eyes and rolls with the punches. This week, however, provided more than he could take.

The City athletic office, after receiving negative feedback over the weekend, changed the seedings in the boys’ 4-A Division playoffs on Monday and moved Taft into a different bracket.

Woodard’s blood pressure zoomed, because if Taft, the North Valley League champion, beats visiting San Pedro in the first round tonight, it will probably play top-seeded Westchester of the Western League in the second round Friday. Westchester’s first-round opponent is 16th-seeded Granada Hills.

“The City is a joke,” Woodard said. “They’ve lost all credibility, they’ve lost all integrity.”

Westchester Coach Ed Azzam and Carson Coach Richard Masson had contacted City administrator Lee Joseph over the weekend to voice their objections to the original bracketing. Azzam contended Westchester should not have been scheduled to face Carson, the champion of the Pacific League, in the second round.

“Ed Azzam’s still facing a first-place team,” Woodard said of the revision. “He’s facing us. He just didn’t want to play Carson.”

The playoff seedings were formulated last Thursday, with Woodard, Azzam and a slew of 4-A coaches in attendance. Masson did not attend.

Monday, the City decided that because Carson had beaten Dorsey and Crenshaw in the regular season--both teams were seeded higher than Carson in the original draft of the bracket--that a change was warranted, according to a City spokesman.

Had the bracket remained in its initial form, and if all four league champions had won in the first round, Taft would have faced Washington (the Southern League champion) in the second round and Carson would have gone against Westchester.

In the new bracket, the winner of the first-round game between Kennedy and Carson will play the winner of Washington-Banning. The winner of Taft-San Pedro will face the winner of Westchester-Granada Hills.

The initial 4-A playoff bracketing came as a result of a new subjective seeding policy--according to a team’s strength--rather than its final placement in the league standings.

Before a game last Friday, Woodard informed his team that it needed a victory to ensure a home game in the second round. Taft won, but Woodard’s promise was shot down when the change was made. In the City, the team with the best league record plays at home in the first two rounds.

Taft (17-4, 9-1 in league play) had the second-best league record in the 4-A Division--but Westchester has the best at 10-0 and will be the home team if both schools win their playoff openers.

“Westchester is regarded by everyone as the best team in the division,” Woodard said. “We thought that since we were in (a different) bracket, we might be able to beat some teams and maybe even make the semis.

“Now we don’t even get a home game (in the second round) on Friday.”

HEADS OR TAILS

Reseda boys’ Coach Jeff Halpern had a rough two days battling the odds. In fact, he was a flip-flop.

Monday morning, Halpern was downtown at the City Section athletics office and was asked to represent the Reseda girls’ team in a three-way coin toss to determine the playoff seeding for the West Valley League.

Reseda, El Camino Real and Kennedy finished in a three-way tie for first place, but once the coin toss was completed, Reseda found itself seeded No. 3 behind Kennedy and El Camino Real.

Halpern’s luck didn’t improve on Tuesday. To establish the top-seeded boys’ team from the West Valley League--Reseda and Chatsworth shared the title--another coin toss was required.

Reseda lost the flip and will play Lincoln at Wilson tonight in the first round of the 3-A Division playoffs. The Chatsworth boys will play host to Lincoln.

In the opening round of the girls’ 4-A playoffs tonight, Kennedy plays host to Dorsey, El Camino Real plays host to Canoga Park and Reseda plays at Van Nuys.

BRAVE IMPROVEMENT

Though Birmingham’s hopes for postseason play were snuffed out by a loss to Sherman Oaks CES on Monday, the Braves made some believers.

“We never won a game in summer league, never won a game in the spring. In Palm Springs (tournament) we won one game,” Birmingham Coach Al Bennett said, “I had people tell me we weren’t going to win a game all year.”

Birmingham finished 10-12, four games better than last season.

MAN-TO-MANIC

The numbers on the front of Chatsworth guard Chris Dunbar’s jersey have started to peel away. Perhaps it has something to do with the team’s chest-in-your face defense.

Dunbar and his teammates have played man-to-man defense all season, and though Coach Sandy Greentree admits the players still have a few subtleties to learn, he isn’t about to change things--even after Reseda point guard Trenton Cross shredded the defense last week in scoring 34 points on an assortment of three-point shots and drives to the basket.

“We played man defense all the way--we’ve played man defense all season,” Greentree said. “I don’t believe in zone. It’s un-American.

“Some of our guys are still learning how to play it, but we’re sticking with it. Maybe they’ll learn it by next year.”

It might be too late. Three of his five starters are seniors.

HARRIS POLL

Kennedy was once the scourge of Valley girls’ basketball. Victories in league play were practically a given. The Golden Cougars won City Section titles in 1981-82, 1985-86 and 1986-87. Players often attracted considerable attention from college recruiters.

Shaneya Harris, a 5-foot-10 junior, is once again turning the floodlights toward Kennedy.

Harris scored a game-high 22 points and added 11 rebounds to lead Kennedy over Cleveland on Friday, handing the Golden Cougars a share of the West Valley League title.

In three games last week, Harris scored 91 points, including 35 against El Camino Real and 34 against Reseda. The competition wasn’t exactly light: Kennedy, El Camino Real and Reseda shared the West Valley title with records of 7-2.

PHOTO FINISH

An exciting race for the team’s scoring title at Hoover was decided by the narrowest of margins as the Tornadoes were being eliminated from the Southern Section Division I-AA boys’ basketball playoffs by top-seeded Lynwood.

Forward Chad Reese, who scored 49 points in two playoff games, finished with 516 points in 24 games (21.5 average) to edge guard Dave Ulloa. Ulloa, a three-point specialist who scored 51 points in the playoffs, came in second at 515 (21.46).

TECHNICALLY SPEAKING

Oak Park rallied from a 12-point third-quarter deficit Friday in its 58-55 victory over host Kern Valley in a first-round game of the Southern Section Division IV-A playoffs.

It is believed to be the first boys’ playoff victory since the school opened its doors in 1981, but it was a first of another kind that had first-year Coach Rob Hall nearly kicking himself.

Hall, who said that he has “been good for three or four” technical-foul assessments a season in the past, picked the Kern Valley game to be whistled for the first time this season. Hall was criticizing an official in the first half when the technical was called.

“I promised myself that I was going to cut down this year,” he said. “I’ve been pretty good about it, but enough was enough.”

His first could have been his last. However, Kern Valley converted just one of the two free throws and turned the ball over on the automatic possession that followed.

“It didn’t hurt us in the end,” Hall said. “But it didn’t come at a very good time.”

ELEMENTAL ABSENCE

Littlerock’s first appearance in the Southern Section playoffs ended in defeat last week to Monrovia.

Littlerock, in its first year of varsity competition, was at a disadvantage long before the opening tip. The Lobos (16-6), a free-lance team, had played just one game in three weeks before facing Monrovia.

If the recent torrential rains hadn’t caused cancellation of the Lobos’ game with Rancho Verde a week before the playoffs, might Littlerock have benefited from the tuneup?

“I don’t know if it would have changed the outcome,” Coach Mark Groh said. “But, it couldn’t have hurt any.”

Vince Kowalick and staff writers Steve Elling, Paige A. Leech and Jeff Riley contributed to this notebook.