Minus Cotton, Their Profile Doesn’t Shrink

In a cost-efficient move by the Southern Section office, the championship patches awarded to Saturday night’s Division I-A winners were colored red and white.

This is to ensure that the patches will not clash on the letterman jackets worn by Mater Dei High School basketball players, who have won the Division I-A title five times in the last five years and six times in the last seven years and 11 times in the last 14 years.

There is one difference with this 1995-96 patch, which the Monarchs earned with a methodical 57-47 triumph over Glendora at the Pond of Anaheim.

This patch is made of 0% Cotton.

Schea Cotton, the fabled 6-5 forward who was profiled in Sports Illustrated before he had his driver’s permit, pulled a Mater Dei on Mater Dei last summer--he jumped programs, transferred out and relocated, landing at the school from whence he came, Bellflower St. John Bosco.

This was supposed to put a crimp in the championship patch production line. No Clay McKnight and no Shaun Jackson--they left Mater Dei the traditional way; they graduated--and, suddenly, no Cotton.

Hope sprang anew throughout Orange County and the rest of the Southern Section.

Mater Dei was wounded, depleted, vulnerable, ripe for the taking.

In this condition, the Monarchs looked certain to lose, oh, two or three games this season.

Conceivably, one of those losses could come in the Division I-A final.

The long-lost concept of the fighting chance seemed to be returning to local boys’ high school basketball.

Especially after Mater Dei began its 1995-96 season 0-1.

That loss came at the hands of national power Mouth of Wilson (Va.) Oak Hill Academy, but 0-1 is 0-1. “We opened the season and lost by nine points,” Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight said, “and I thought, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good, we kept it close.’ ”

Four months later, McKnight looked at the scoreboard high above the Pond floor and grinned.

“I never dreamed,” he said, “we’d win 32 in a row from there.”

Kevin Augustine, the junior point guard who stayed, wasn’t sure about 32 straight, either, but he suspected the Monarchs had enough victories in them to return to the state tournament and defending the championship Cotton helped bring home last March.

“I kept hearing in my ear all year long, ‘You aren’t that good, you aren’t that good,” Augustine said. “That really drilled me and it really drilled my teammates.

“We came out in November and our goal was to win the [Southern Section] title. And I don’t think anyone else thought we really could. We lost a lot of our big guns, but I knew we could still play.”

Augustine remembered that when he enrolled at Mater Dei in 1993, he and fellow freshmen basketball players David Castleton, Tom Lippold, Mike Vukovich and Chris Burgess were introduced at school pep rallies as “The Fab Five.” They were the next link in the Mater Dei dynasty, even if their part of the chain began to mutate shortly thereafter.

Cotton transferred into Mater Dei midway through the 1993-94 and Burgess transferred out, heading for Woodbridge High, immediately after.

First the “Fab Five” nickname got scrambled, then, eventually, it was abandoned altogether.

“Yeah, they were the Fab Five,” McKnight said. “Then Cotton came and Burgess left. Then Cotton left and they kind of weren’t five any more.”

Brad Williams, a football player headed for Notre Dame, was added to the equation this season and the Monarchs had five players, fab or otherwise, capable of keeping the championship run in tact.

Thirty-two victories in a row.

Seems like a snap of the fingers, Augustine said Saturday.

“This season went by really fast,” Augustine said. “Last season seemed like it took forever.”

McKnight: “Last season there was a lot of stress. Everyone expected us to win the state championship, and if we didn’t it was going to be considered a down year.”

Now, with four juniors in the starting lineup, the Monarchs are back in the state tournament and who knows how far they can take this streak from here.

They begin it, though, with handsome red and white patches. That’s five in five years for Mater Dei. A fab five, by any definition you care to use.