THE HIGH SCHOOLS / STEVE ELLING : 700 and Counting: Cvijanovich Rolls On, Crediting Players

To properly frame the latest career accomplishment of Lou Cvijanovich, we offer the following number-crunching and bean counting.

Cvijanovich, in his 35th year as coach of the Santa Clara boys’ basketball team, chalked up career victory No. 700 when the Saints knocked off St. Genevieve, 70-52, Friday night in the first round of the Division IV-A playoffs.

That’s 20 an average of victories a season. According to Cal-Hi Sports, only two other coaches in state history have reached the 700 plateau.

The milestone was no secret on campus, and Cvijanovich was floored by the outpouring of affection afterward. Coach C, as he is known in Oxnard, is not one to display the widest range of emotion during games, but he was clearly moved.

His players gave him a signed basketball emblazoned with 700, boosters gave him a clock and faculty members gave him a bouquet of balloons large enough to cause a helium shortage.

“I’m appreciative,” he said. “I’d be a damn fool not to be. But what 700 wins really means to me is that I’ve been privileged to have a lot of good players under me.”

Cvijanovich, 66, who was the school’s football coach for 17 years and baseball coach for 12, said the end is nowhere in sight. When will he hang up the whistle?

“When I stop having fun,” he said. “This is my life.”

No small comeback: Minutes earlier, Coach Tim Bednar had been all over his team for laying down on the job. Now the officials were on his case because his team was standing taller than a patch of redwoods.

They even threatened to assess the Moorpark High bench with a technical foul.

“I said, ‘Look, they’re a little excited,’ ” Bednar said. “The ref said he didn’t care, that (players on the bench) couldn’t be standing up the whole second half.”

A standing O was in order.

Bednar pushed buttons all night long Friday in a first-round game of the Southern Section Division II-A playoffs against Workman, but his team seemed destined to be pushing up daisies. Moorpark trailed by 19 points in the third quarter and it was time for a desperation move.

Out with the big guys. In with the squirts. The result was one of the more monumental comebacks in school history, and perhaps the wildest.

Bednar was still in shock hours later.

“It feels real good when it happens for you,” he said. “You yell at the kids for not doing things right, then make an adjustment in mid-game and they pull it off. Unbelievable.”

An adjustment? Try a complete overhaul. Moorpark (13-11) was being blown out like carbon on the valves when Bednar tried a last-gasp move. Aspiration complete.

Moorpark’s big men didn’t match up with Workman’s speed, so Bednar sent four guards and a forward onto the floor in the third quarter. The tallest Musketeer player was 6-foot-3 and the gnats came at Workman in swarms, forcing turnovers by the bundle with a smothering half-court trap.

“Some of the starters just weren’t getting the job done,” Bednar said. “(The substitutes) just went for it, they took some chances and made things happen. They just said, ‘Hey, I’m creating something.’ ”

Workman would like to know how in creation it happened so quickly. With five minutes left in the third quarter, Workman held a 42-23 lead. With five minutes left in the game, the score was tied, 55-55.

“They didn’t make any adjustments,” Bednar said. “They didn’t even call timeout, and we made up all 19 points.”

And then some. It was a complete TKO. Moorpark buried Workman, 26-9, in the fourth quarter.

Leaps and bounds: Calling all volunteers. Wanted: A little guy with proportional regard for life and limb.

Notre Dame forward Monte Marcaccini found his man in the stands of a basketball pep rally Friday and placed him on the gym floor, six feet from the basket.

Exhibition time was at hand. If anything went awry, execution time was too. Some poor guy was risking decapitation and didn’t even know it.

“I just picked this one kid out of the crowd, some guy about 5-foot-8,” Marcaccini said.

Said Marcaccini to the kid: “Stand right here.”

Said the kid: “Uh, OK.”

Said the crowd: “ Yiiieeee .”

Marcaccini wisely had the kid face the basket.

“If he sees you coming, he might move and who knows what happens,” Marcaccini said.

Marcaccini backpedaled to mid-court as the crowd sensed his next move. The volunteer, who had no idea what was going on, held his ground. Marcaccini dribbled the ball down the floor, skied over the clueless student’s head and dunked with considerable panache.

The house rocked, exactly as it did that night when Marcaccini scored 27 points to lead Notre Dame to a 91-53 rout of Pacifica in a first-round Division III-A game.

And the reviews?

“Definitely one of my best dunks ever,” Marcaccini said.

Close shave: David Fennell said he had two goals coming into his senior year. He and his Village Christian teammates accomplished the second objective Friday night by the slimmest of margins.

Goal No. 1 was to win the Alpha League title, which Village Christian accomplished with relative ease. Goal No. 2 was a bit more difficult--to win a playoff game, which would represent a team first.

With Village Christian (20-4) holding a two-point lead in its first-round Division IV-A game, Jason Hide of Whittier Christian launched a desperation bomb from half-court as the buzzer sounded. In the blink of an eye, Goal No. 2 was very much in doubt.

“I thought it was in,” Fennell said. “The whole team thought it was in. It was a tad too close for my liking.”

The shot caromed off the back of the rim and bounced away, however, giving Village Christian a 65-63 victory.

Reap what they sew: They seeded the City on Thursday.

What was planted? Seeds of discontent, perhaps.

It was announced at the City Section seeding meeting that El Camino Real would make the 3-A Division tournament field as the 16th and final team if the Conquistadores won Friday. El Camino Real did so, defeating San Fernando to place third in the North Valley League at 4-6.

However, the picture clouded considerably when Wilson won and Verdugo Hills lost their regular-season final Friday. The pair finished in a tie for second in the Northwestern League.

Yet only Verdugo Hills had been given a playoff berth at the meeting, which no Wilson representative attended. Consequently, it was understood that a victory Friday would give El Camino Real (13-9) the last entry. El Camino Real would open against top-seeded Monroe, Commissioner Hal Harkness said.

“Everybody there wrote down what Hal said: ‘El Camino is in if they win,’ ” said Canoga Park Coach Jeff Davis, who attended the meeting. “Wilson didn’t even send anybody. That league stinks. I can’t believe they’d make a big deal out of this.”

Apparently, they have. Wilson Coach Mario Cantu said he spoke with Harkness on Friday morning about the potential snafu. According to Cantu, Harkness said a final decision on which teams would be included in the field would be made Monday if Wilson finished in a second-place tie. Harkness could not be reached for comment.

Unsolicited, a simple suggestion to avoid similar future complications: If Wilson and El Camino Real indeed must wait until Monday to learn their fate, why can’t the City follow the lead of its Southern Section counterpart and wait until the regular season is complete before seeding the playoffs?

He’s a real nowhere man: Oak Park, once again, was on the “road to nowhere,” as Coach Rob Hall called his team’s playoff destination.

Specifically, nowhere is known as Kern Valley High, located in rural Lake Isabella outside Bakersfield. Oak Park knows the roadways well.

Oak Park (14-9) spanked Kern Valley, 56-37, in a Division IV-A first-round game Friday that had a familiar ring for the visitors. The Eagles beat host Kern Valley in the first round last year too.

“It may be out there a ways,” Hall said, “but we’ll play up there every year if they let us.”