Whittier Is Not at a Loss Anymore

Isn’t 13 supposed to be the unlucky number?

Not if you’re Whittier College’s football team.

A day after Friday the 13th, Whittier ended its 13-game losing streak, defeating Claremont-Mudd-Scripps, 24-17.

“It worked for us,” said a not-so-superstitious Whittier Coach Bob Owens.

The Poets had not celebrated a victory since beating Occidental in the final game of the 1998 season. Between victories, the program suffered heavy graduation losses, a winless 1999 season, during which the Poets were outscored, 358-99, and defeats in their first four games this season.

Owens said the victory last Saturday was special to the players who had suffered through those 13 losses.

“Being that most of our players were new, very few of them were concerned about the losing streak,” he said. “To them, they’d lost four in a row. But there’s no way that this can be diminished for anyone that was here last year.”

It was the Poet offense, something often in short supply, that came through. Quarterback Mark Mejia threw for 148 yards and ran for 82. Andre Stewart ran for 95 yards and a touchdown. Matt Daniels caught a 10-yard scoring pass and Freddie Lee added a five-yard touchdown run.

Whittier’s losing streak suggests that the Poets have long been a conference doormat. Hardly.

They won the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title in 1998 and were co-champions in 1997. A confident and optimistic Owens believes Whittier’s fortunes are turning around.

“Right now, we’re 1-0 in conference,” he said. “One of the things we’ve had throughout this whole process was . . . great attitude.”

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Azusa Pacific’s football team is perfecting the staging of the improbable comeback.

Last year, the Cougars rallied from first-half deficits of 24-0 and 39-13 to beat Redlands en route to the NAIA national semifinals. On Saturday, they topped that with a wild 54-51 victory over Cal Lutheran when quarterback Luke Winslow threw a nine-yard touchdown pass to Kevin Carlsen on the last play.

It culminated a game in which the teams scored 78 points in the first half. Azusa Pacific trailed, 27-0, with four minutes left in the first quarter but rallied to tie it at 34-34 before giving up 10 points in the final 10 seconds of the half.

“I’ve never seen anything close to that,” second-year Cougar Coach Peter Shinnick said of the half.

The Cougars took a 48-44 lead in the fourth quarter but Cal Lutheran went back ahead on Dorian Stitt’s five-yard touchdown run. It only set the stage for Winslow and the Cougars.

Winslow completed three passes, one for six yards to Caleb Willis but the receiver couldn’t get out of bounds to stop the clock. As time ticked off, Azusa Pacific raced to the line of scrimmage and Winslow spiked the ball with two seconds left.

The Cougars could have tied it with a short field goal but Cal Lutheran had blocked two extra points. So Azusa Pacific went for the win instead, Winslow lobbing a high pass to Carlsen.

“I truly think all the games we had last year, where we came from behind, carried over to this year,” Shinnick said. “Even when we were down 27-0, the guys truly believed they would come back.”

The numbers from the game were staggering.

Willis caught eight passes for a school-record 249 yards. Winslow threw for 380 yards, and the Cougars had 632 yards of total offense. Stitt ran for a career-high 201.

The victory might have saved Azusa Pacific’s season. Ranked 11th, the Cougars need to beat Menlo and Chapman in their final two games to lock up a spot in the playoffs.

“If we lost, we would have needed a ton of losses by the top teams to make it to the playoffs,” Shinnick said.

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Azusa Pacific maintained its national No. 2 NAIA ranking in men’s soccer and stayed atop the Golden State Athletic Conference with victories over Westmont, 2-0, and Point Loma Nazarene, 1-0. The Cougars (12-1-1, 5-0-1) got goals from Ryan Fridborg and Jordan Jones against eighth-ranked Westmont and defeated them for only the fifth time in 26 meetings.

Senior Eli Klovee-Smith helped lead the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s cross-country team to victory in the SCIAC multi-dual meet by winning the 8,000-meter race in 26 minutes 15.1 seconds. Sophomore Laura Bishop of Pomona-Pitzer won the women’s 5,000-meter race in 18:45.7.

UNIVERSITY DIVISION

Pepperdine won its 24th consecutive West Coast Conference women’s volleyball match by defeating Gonzaga, 15-11, 15-7, 15-5, Saturday in Spokane, Wash. The fifth-ranked Waves (15-3, 5-0) haven’t lost in the WCC since 1998.

The USC women’s soccer team, currently on a seven-game unbeaten streak and ranked 13th in the National Soccer Coaches Assn. of America poll, starts its most difficult trip of the season today at No. 15 Santa Clara (9-4-1). The Trojans then play No. 3 Washington (13-1-0) Friday and Washington State (10-4-0) Sunday.

Long Beach State won its seventh consecutive game in men’s water polo by stunning No. 2 USC last Sunday, 11-9. Justin Jewell and Chris Segesman each scored three goals as the 49ers (10-3, 2-0 in the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation) scored five times in the third quarter to take the lead.

Sophomore Arturo Torres of Loyola Marymount set a school record Sunday with his 24th goal in the Lions’ 2-2 tie with San Diego. Torres is third in the WCC with nine goals this season.