Mater Dei’s Lukash Picks Villanova

Mater Dei quarterback Scott Lukash has committed to attend Villanova next fall, Monarch Coach Bruce Rollinson said Tuesday.

In leading Mater Dei to a 13-1 record and the 1998 Southern Section Division I championship Lukash--in his first season as a starter--passed for 2,417 yards and 29 touchdowns with only four interceptions.

Lukash was a second-team Times all-county selection.

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John Leonard, a former Mater Dei quarterback, has committed to Arizona State, his father, Doyle, said.

Leonard played last season at El Camino College and passed for 2,193 yards and 23 touchdowns in the regular season.

In the South Bay Bowl, he passed for 572 yards and eight touchdowns in a 71-67 loss to Santa Monica.

Leonard, from Huntington Beach, was a first-team All-South Coast League player at Mater Dei in 1997.

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Greg Cicero, The Times Orange County’s first-team quarterback selection in 1996, has left Texas and will enroll at Palomar College in San Marcos this semester, Texas administrators announced.

Cicero, who graduated from Servite, did not play a down at Texas. He was a redshirt in 1997 and sat out last season because of a knee injury that required surgery. Had he returned to Texas in the fall, he would have been battling to back up Major Applewhite, the Big 12 freshman of the year in 1998.

“It is just time for me to move on to where I can have a chance to play immediately,” Cicero told the Austin (Texas) American-Statesman.

The 6-foot-4, 200-pound Cicero, who led Orange County with 3,078 passing yards and 30 touchdowns in 1996, did not rule out a return to Texas.

“Out of 100 reasons to stay or go, 99 of them were to stay,” he said. “The one reason to go was to get to play, and I wanted to play.”