Beyond Cliche at Alemany

To say the Alemany High boys’ basketball season has been filled with obstacles is like saying Charles Manson has a slight public relations problem.

The season, which was bad to begin with, crumbled, so to speak, at 4:31 a.m. Jan. 17, when the Northridge earthquake damaged the school so severely that nine of the 12 campus buildings will have to be leveled.

So the Indians, out of school for two weeks, became nomads, practicing wherever they could find a gym or an outdoor court without too many cracks in it. Some of the players’ homes were damaged enough that they had to find temporary lodging.

Now that they are back in school, the students are attending classes in split sessions at Our Lady Queen of Angels Seminary across the street. Portable classrooms will be brought in soon and assembled in a nearby orange grove.

Yeah, life’s rough, but the earthquake isn’t the half of it. Throw all the happy cliches out the window with this team.

Look for the silver lining.

A few days after the earthquake, Phillip Aldrete’s home in Sylmar was looted.

“He said, ‘Coach, it looked like they just pulled up a truck and scooped out all they could,’ ” Alemany Coach Robert Webb said.

The only way to go is up.

Last Tuesday, Brandon Patin was driving teammate Tim Kubasak to his home in the Santa Clarita Valley after a morning practice at Notre Dame. The roads were slick, and Patin slammed into a guard rail where Interstate 5 meets Highway 14.

Kubasak suffered a slight shoulder separation, Webb said. Otherwise, just bumps and bruises for the two. The car, which belonged to Patin’s mother, will require about $4,000 worth of repairs, Patin said.

It’s darkest just before dawn.

Last Wednesday, with the lots at Alemany closed for safety reasons, assistant Mike Huggins parked his car in the Holy Cross Hospital lot before practice.

When he returned to his car, he found the windows broken and the radio stolen.

Huggins had planned to go from practice to meet with his fiancee and the pastor who would be marrying them, but his change of clothes was also stolen. He had to go in his Alemany sweat suit.

“They were all understanding,” Huggins said. “It’s one of those things you don’t expect to happen after an earthquake.”

Things can only get better.

Last Saturday, when the Indians met at Alemany for a trip to Torrance and a game against Bishop Montgomery, the van that was supposed to transport them wasn’t there. The team waited and waited, finally making it to Bishop Montgomery as the final buzzer from the junior varsity game was sounding.

With only 15 minutes of preparation, Alemany went out and lost by eight points. A moral victory, considering the Indians lost by 35 the first time the teams met.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

All of it is Webb’s introduction to being a head coach. At 25--”I feel like I’m about 95”--Webb is in his first year of running a program.

“If the years get tougher than this, I’m not going to be doing this long,” he said. “I’ll be on a farm somewhere picking vegetables. Or fishing a lot.”

Besides dealing with the off-court problems, he’s trying to coax victories out of a basketball team that lacks height and experience. The Indians are 3-17, 0-11 in the Mission League.

Webb says the team is improving despite the setbacks. After all, the first time through the schedule the Indians lost to Bishop Montgomery and St. Bernard by a combined 65 points. In post-earthquake games, they lost by only 15 to those opponents.

Break out the champagne.

“Teams are going to be glad they don’t have to play us one more time,” Webb said. “I have to commend my players. The easy thing is to say ‘Let’s just forget this,’ but they are battling and playing better than ever. Don’t ask me to explain it. We shouldn’t be playing well, but we are.”

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He Said It: After Agoura’s Benon Ureda swished the winning three-pointer with 11 seconds remaining in overtime against Simi Valley on Friday, he said he was comfortable with the shot. “I was in a rhythm,” Ureda said.

A rhythm, huh? Must have been a mental one. Ureda made only one other basket in the game, and it was in the first half. Nice shooting anyway, Benon.

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Looking Ahead: One of the more interesting playoff matchups we might be seeing would be Harvard-Westlake against St. Francis. Both are among the top teams in the Southern Section’s Division III-A, so they could meet in the semifinals or the championship game.

Harvard is 19-2, largely because of freshmen Jason and Jarron Collins. At 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-7, the twins don’t find many eyes in the Mission League into which they can look directly. The Wolverines have been winning by posting up against shorter players and making layup after layup.

“They won’t be able to do that to us,” St. Francis Coach John Jordan said.

The Golden Knights (18-5) feature 6-8 Braden Weber and 6-11 Chris Ott.

Stay tuned.

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The Great Outdoors: Because Highland Hall’s gym was being used by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to implement earthquake relief and West Valley Christian’s was damaged by the quake, the teams played their Westside League makeup game Saturday morning on a full-sized blacktop court at West Valley Christian.

The game had regular officials and spectators and everything. Even an electronic scoreboard was rigged up, with the help of an extra-long extension cord.

“You couldn’t see the clock because of the glare of the sun, though,” Highland Hall senior Kamal Van Scoy said.

One might have expected the wind to create shooting problems, but Van Scoy didn’t use that excuse for his team’s 47-25 loss.

“It wasn’t the wind,” he said. “We were just missing our shots.”