Passers Ran, Now They Can’t Hide

Quarterback Mike Kocicka of Hart High couldn’t believe what he was seeing when UCLA’s Wayne Cook took off running with no timeouts and 15 seconds left in the Rose Bowl game. Cook, of course, couldn’t get the Bruins together for another play, and thus a nightmarish afternoon for UCLA ended at the Wisconsin 14-yard line.

“At first I thought, ‘Who would ever run the ball in that situation?’ ” said Kocicka, who did just that, to the opponent’s five-yard line, as time ran out in Hart’s 44-42 playoff loss to Dominguez in November.

But as the final seconds rushed off the clock in Wisconsin’s 21-16 victory--and as Cook frantically tried to line up his team--Kocicka realized he was reliving the low point of his 2,966-yard, 32-touchdown senior season.

“Everyone at school calls me Wayne Cook now,” Kocicka said. “Maybe they should be calling him Mike Kocicka. I can feel for Wayne Cook. I know what he’s going through.”

Why didn’t Cook and Kocicka use better judgment in that situation?

Said Kocicka: “You don’t ever practice (what to do with) 15 seconds left in the biggest football game of your life. I just reacted and tried to get the ball in the end zone.”

FOOTHILL LEAGUE

Those Other Kids

For those who think the Hart basketball team--sporting a 15-1 record and The Times’ No. 1 ranking in the region--is ready to run away with the league championship, think again.

Canyon is 13-4, having won 11 of 12 games without much fanfare.

“They deserve all the attention,” Canyon Coach Greg Hayes said of Hart.

Canyon could get a lot of attention if it can beat rival Hart on Saturday night in the first of three games against the Indians. Canyon already has surpassed its victory total of last season with a group of players who aren’t accustomed to winning. The current senior class won six games as freshmen, the juniors only three.

“If you measure success on wins and losses, we’re up and down,” Hayes said. “But if you measure success in terms of improving from your freshman year to your senior year, there’s a lot of success here.”

MISSION LEAGUE

Pucker Up

The last thing Harvard-Westlake’s Scott Garson was expecting as he guarded Cameron Murray, Glendora’s USC-bound senior, was a kiss, but that’s what he got.

Garson and Murray are good friends from American Roundball Corp. games, and their high school teams met in the championship game of the Covina tournament last week.

As Murray tried to set up to take an inbounds pass toward the end of the first half, Garson was all over him. So, just to throw Garson off and get a little room, Murray kissed him on the cheek.

Shocked, Garson momentarily stepped back.

“It was pretty weird, but he laughed it off and I laughed it off,” Garson said. “I got back and told him never to do that again, and he said not to worry about it.”

Around the Leagues . . .

* Nordhoff guard Mark Sebek, who averages 25.3 points a game, set a school record with 40 points against St. Bonaventure. He broke Tim Siefken’s record of 37, set against Santa Paula in 1975. Sebek entered the week with 1,128 points, No. 2 on the Rangers’ all-time list behind his older brother, Tim (1,664).

* Canyon’s recent eight-game winning streak was the second longest in school history. During the streak, the Cowboys scored an average of 82 points a game.

* Matchup we’d like to see: Chatsworth senior point guard Philbert Hernandez (5-foot-4) and Birmingham junior point guard Marc Fernando (5-4), who each rank among the area’s peskiest defensive backcourt players.

Staff writers Steve Elling, Jeff Fletcher and Dana Haddad contributed to this notebook.