Highland Is Getting Last Laugh

Highland High’s boys’ basketball program has a bit of clown in its past. This season, however, the Bulldogs are no bozos.

Then: Highland was the Golden League equivalent of a floppy-shoed, bulb-nosed circus performer, finishing last with a laughable 3-12 league mark last season.

Now: Wipe off those painted smiles. Real ones are in order. Friday night, the Bulldogs (13-6, 8-3 in league play) clinched their first playoff berth.

“I called it a rebuilding year,” Coach Tom Mahan said of last season. “Of course, you always do that when you don’t win.”

In Friday night’s playoff-clinching victory over Littlerock, the key player was sophomore John Burrell--whose father, Sam (Chico) Burrell, was a member of the Harlem Clowns, a barnstorming basketball team in the 1960s.

“He told me how fun it was--the travel and putting on shows for people,” Burrell said.

The athletic 6-foot-2 forward put on a show Friday night, scoring 16 points and pulling down 17 rebounds.

“He played incredibly well,” Mahan said. “He plays above the rim. Most of his points came when he got the rebound and laid it in while he was up there. He jumps quickly and explosively.”

Burrell said his father, with whom he does not live, encouraged him to take up basketball when he was junior high. He had primarily played football, but he soon grew to love the hardwood as much as his 6-7 father.

And along with a talent for the game, he hopes to inherit a few more inches in height. “If he gets up to 6-4 or 6-5, he could be something special,” Mahan said.

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Add Highland: The key to the turnaround has been the emergence Burrell and Jamal Dedeaux to take the pressure off 6-6 1/2 Pharoah Davis.

The senior forward is one of the top players in the region, but Highland’s problem is that every opponent knows it.

“Last year, he surprised people,” Mahan said. “This year everybody knows who to stop. There are usually two or three guys on him.”

Highland relied on Davis too much early on and started 0-4, but have since become more balanced and won 13 of 15 games.

Davis, who averages 23 points and 10 rebounds, nearly signed with San Diego State this fall but decided to wait. He has drawn interest from such schools as Arizona State, Cal, Iowa, Oregon State, Oregon, Loyola Marymount and Marquette.

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Lauer power: Your team loses its first two league games. Soon after, your star player badly sprains his ankle, misses a game and scores a grand total of five points in the next two contests. You pack it in and start thinking about next year, right?

Not if you’re Thousand Oaks.

The defending Marmonte League champion Lancers have been nothing if not resilient. Despite an 0-2 league start and the continuing ankle problems of Washington-bound center Jason Hartman, Thousand Oaks (15-5, 6-2) has won six consecutive games.

Hartman, averaging 18.3 points, was limited to five in two games last week.

Big shoes to fill, especially since Hartman wears size-16s.

Up stepped senior guard Peter Lauer, who torched Newbury Park for 30 points Wednesday night and had 19 in Friday night’s victory over Agoura.

“He’s picked it up to another level the last two games,” Hartman said of Lauer. “He’s a prolific shooter. You can’t leave him open, because he’s deadly. And in the last couple of years he’s improved his ability driving to the hole.”

Hartman and Lauer have played on the same team since they were 10 years old in a youth league.

Back then, Lauer was the tallest and best player on the team, which once won 50 consecutive games.

Now Hartman is 6-7 and Lauer is 6-1, but for the moment, Lauer is standing tall.

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Crescenta Valley: What’s in the air there? Last season, Falcon basketball player Adam Jacobsen launched bomb after bomb en route to becoming the Southern Section’s all-time leading three-point shooter.

This season, Crescenta Valley’s female star, Sarah Hagman, has made 105 three-point shots, including a section-record 13 in a game. The senior guard needs eight more to break the section’s season record.

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Irish aye: San Fernando High quarterback/defensive back Leon Blunt said Saturday he still favors Notre Dame over USC and he plans to sign a letter of intent to Notre Dame at 8 a.m. Wednesday, the earliest possible hour.

“It’s pretty much final that I plan to attend Notre Dame,” said Blunt, who made an oral commitment to the Irish but later took an official recruiting trip to USC. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, but I’ve never changed my mind.”