Reprise Is More Rewarding for Upstart Crescenta Valley : Goffredo Leads Falcons Back to Semifinals in Basketball Despite Injuries, New Lineup

Crescenta Valley High basketball Coach John Goffredo looked at his team back in November--at the players he had and the players he didn’t--and figured this might be a long season.

He was right.

Here it is, the last week in February, and the Falcons are still playing.

“There weren’t a lot of high expectations . . . but this team has reached its potential more than any other team I’ve ever had,” said Goffredo, the Falcon coach for 16 seasons.

Crescenta Valley (18-9) qualified for the Southern Section Division I-AA playoffs as an at-large team after finishing fourth in the Pacific League. The Falcons pulled off a stunning upset by beating top-seeded Fontana, 85-77, Tuesday night in a quarterfinal game. The Steelers (26-2) were ranked fourth in the state by Cal-Hi Sports.

Crescenta Valley is scheduled to meet Santa Ana Valley in a semifinal game Friday night at Glendale High. It will be the second consecutive semifinal appearance for the Falcons, but last season’s team and this season’s could not have taken more divergent paths.

The 1992-93 team had a solid group of senior starters, led by Adam Jacobsen, who graduated as the Southern Section’s all-time leading three-point shooter. The Falcons were ranked among the top 20 teams in the state and took no one by surprise when they advanced to the semifinals in the Division II-AA bracket. A 61-51 loss to Dominguez ended their season at 22-5.

But all five starters from that squad graduated. The most significant returnee was 6-foot-4 junior Brock Jacobsen, Adam’s younger brother. But he was useless the first month of the season because he suffered a broken wrist playing football with friends.

The rest of the projected front line, 6-foot-3 sophomore Mike Greco and 6-foot-10 junior Blake Jacobson, also were injured. Jacobson suffered a sprained ankle and returned after a few weeks. Greco shattered bones in his left arm trying to win a $20 bet by making a 360-degree dunk. He has missed the whole season.

The inexperienced Falcons played in three tournament championship games during December. They lost them all. “We were just not mature enough to pull off a win,” Goffredo said.

They lost to the top teams in the league--Glendale, Muir and Pasadena--during the first round of the schedule.

Crescenta Valley lost its gym to the Jan. 17 earthquake. The Falcons have been practicing at junior high schools and parks in the area, and playing games at Glendale College or Glendale High. Saturday, the team practiced outside for the first time in Goffredo’s tenure. It seems a badminton class was using the gym at Glendale College.

“Nothing was going our way this year,” Jacobson said.

But the Falcons came together after the earthquake. They successfully controlled the tempo against running teams Pasadena and Muir, beating both the second time through the league.

They used the same strategy to beat Sierra League champion Nogales in the first round and Citrus Belt champion Fontana.

“We knew we had to control the tempo or (Fontana) would be out there fast-breaking and dunking all over us,” senior guard Richard O’Neill said.

Said Goffredo: “It was like the game plan was absolutely perfect. We didn’t want to run with (Fontana). We wanted to set up and take the shots that we wanted and we put them down.”

The two hottest shooters are O’Neill, who is averaging 23.2 points a game, and Jacobsen, who has steadily raised his average to 20.8 points. The key for Jacobsen has simply been his health.

“He’s been shooting extremely well,” Goffredo said. “I don’t think it’s anything other than his wrist feeling good. He’s scoring the way I thought he would.”

He scored 38 and 19 in the first two playoff games. After he scored 33 against Fontana, he heard from Adam, now playing at Pacific.

“He doesn’t believe we are doing this good,” Brock Jacobsen said. “He said we have a great coach and if we just keep playing hard, we can keep winning.”