Titles Are McKnight’s Specialty

They are thinking about making a day of it. Put it on the calendar, print it in bold-face type, slip it in between Ash Wednesday and St. Patrick’s Day.

First Saturday in March--Mater Dei Wins Southern Section Basketball Championship .

That was No. 7 Saturday night in the Sports Arena, No. 7 in 10 seasons. Nobody bats .400 anymore, but Gary McKnight, the head coach at Mater Dei for all of those 10 seasons, is batting .700, putting him on a pace of 14 by the year 2002, making these exercises less frequent than filing your income tax but more frequent than smog-checking your car . . . and the first thing McKnight hears on his way to the winners’ podium is a crack about one of the strikeouts.

“We missed you last year,” nudged Scott Cathcart, the Southern Section’s director of media relations.

“Ha,” McKnight shot back, “I missed it more than you did.”

Last year, The Dynasty ran free through the park until it ran into Cherokee Parks, who turned Marina’s semifinal meeting with Mater Dei into his own personal slam-dunk competition, one-on-none. There would be no appearance in the sectional final for McKnight’s Monarchs. That wasn’t a first, but it was a second, and when Bruce Rollinson rubbed it in nine months later by bringing Mater Dei a football championship, the question began to sting in McKnight’s ears.

Didn’t Mater Dei used to be a basketball school?

“I was down,” McKnight had to admit. “But looking back on it, that team achieved as much as it could. Cherokee Parks, let’s face it, is a great player. We led by one going into the fourth quarter, but we just couldn’t hold it.

“When we put together our highlight tape of last season, the first five minutes were nothing but Cherokee dunking. I wanted our players to know they were beaten by a great player.”

Too bad McKnight couldn’t completely convince himself.

“Once you win,” McKnight said, “there’s a lot of pressure to keep it up, a lot of pressure you put on yourself--’Oh, you’re going to win, you’re going to win.’ And even if you aren’t letting anybody down, you feel that you are. That pressure starts to eat at you.”

If you’re McKnight, you deal with the pressure by eating back.

Since that loss to Marina, McKnight’s weight chart has resembled a bounce pass: up, down and up again. Diagnosed last year as a diabetic, McKnight was forced to spend the off-season dieting. “My blood sugar level was 395. It’s supposed to be 80 to 100,” McKnight said. “The doctor told me, ‘Another 100 and you’re in a coma.’ ”

So McKnight cut out the french fries and doughnuts and lost 60 pounds. The blood sugar level re-entered the stratosphere. All was well. McKnight felt fine.

Then another basketball season began.

“I gained it all back,” McKnight said, his head shaking one way and his belly another. “I don’t eat anything fattening anymore, but what I eat, I eat a lot.

“It’s the basketball. This offseason, I’ve got to get it under control.”

The offseason is, most likely, still two weeks away. Saturday’s 65-55 victory over J.W. North of Riverside extended Mater Dei’s record to 31-1 and Mater Dei’s ride into the state tournament, where McKnight’s deepest, most defensive Monarch team appears headed for a long haul. Destination: Sacramento. Itinerary: Potential championship showdown against the best player in the state, Jason Kidd of Alameda St. Joseph.

“Reggie Geary versus Jason Kidd,” McKnight said, relishing the very thought. “It would be a great matchup.”

The vision, however, is fleeting. Reality remains just a half-step away.

“But,” McKnight adds, “that’s still two weeks away. That’s a lot of games, a lot of stress.”

If the coach and his diet can handle it--Katie, bar the refrigerator door--the coach’s players probably will. It is very possible that McKnight coached the best two teams in the Angelus League this season. His first team and his second team. “Our practices are as good as some of our games,” McKnight said. “This is the first time I’ve gone through a whole season playing nine guys. I’ve started out that way in other years, but this is the first time I stuck with it the whole way.”

McKnight grew up alongside the waves in San Clemente. Now, he coaches in waves. The starters go out, press and run until the opponents’ chests are heaving--and then McKnight goes for the kill.

In come Jerry Jones and Chris Jackson and their fresh legs.

In come Miles Simon and David Drakeford and their fresh jump shots.

Out goes the opponent. North lasted longer than most, about 3 1/2 quarters, until the Monarch break ran off back-to-back jams--Marmet Williams followed by Terence Wilborn, 9.4 followed by 9.6--and North proceeded to go south.

Bill Mulligan, the former UC Irvine and future Irvine Valley Community College coach, was in the stands Saturday because he had a doubled-vested interest in the Mater Dei-North game. McKnight was an assistant coach for Mulligan at Saddleback College and North Coach Mike Bartee played for Mulligan at Riverside City College.

Mulligan has seen all of McKnight’s teams, inspected all seven champions. “I think the Beeuswaert-Lewis-Mitchell team (1984) had the best basketball players,” Mulligan declared, “but this team has the better athletes. They just wear people down. And they’re all back next year except for Geary!”

The Dynasty is back, prepared to overstay its welcome. Players transfer in, players graduate to major colleges--the one common thread through it all is the coach in the red sweater.

“ ‘Little Tarkanian,’ ” Mulligan says of his former pupil, and he uses the comparison as a term of endearment. “Unbelievable.”

And when Mulligan sets up shop at Irvine Valley, any day now, he’ll have a friend and a potential feeder system at Mater Dei. One problem, though, the way Mulligan sees it: “They’re all juniors.”

Hundreds of coaches across the Southern Section second that opinion.