Without Top Teams All in One Division, Something Is Missing

By ERIC SHEPARD

Jan. 23, 1997 12 AM PT

There were no arguments when virtually every newspaper and magazine in California rated the Compton Dominguez High boys’ basketball team No. 1 heading into this season.

The Dons finished 34-2 last season, winning the state Division II championship. They returned all of their top players, including senior point guard Kenny Brunner and juniors Jason Thomas and Tayshaun Prince, among others.

Brunner signed with Fresno State in November, and Thomas, a forward, and Prince, a center, are expected to be among the nation’s top recruits next fall.

With expectations at an all-time high, Coach Russell Otis had to ponder the question of whether his team should move up to a higher division.

Since 1985, schools in the CIF have been put in divisions based on their enrollment. The largest schools, with 1,500 or more students, are put in Division I, while the smallest schools, with 300 or fewer students, are in Division V.

Schools in lower divisions have the option of moving up to higher divisions if they believe they will be more competitive.

Dominguez, with 1,236 students, competes in Division II. Most of the best teams in the state, including Crenshaw, Santa Ana Mater Dei, Long Beach Poly and Alameda St. Joseph, are in Division I.

When the deadline to declare moving up passed before the start of the season in November, Otis said he hadn’t given the issue much thought.

“Everyone has been asking me since last year if we were going to go up to Division I,” Otis said. “We won our first state title ever, and the big thing everybody wanted to know was if we were going up.”

Otis justifies his decision to stay put by pointing to his team’s rugged schedule. In December, Dominguez (13-4) competed at the Las Vegas Holiday Classic and at the Best of the West tournament in Long Beach. Each tournament was filled with top teams, and the Dons lost two games in each.

They also played Crenshaw, which has won a record seven state titles, on Monday at the Martin Luther King Jr. Holiday Challenge, winning, 101-90, and will face national power Oak Hill Academy of Virginia on Feb. 1 at UC Irvine’s Bren Center.

“Why should all of the best teams go up to Division I and fight it out?” Otis said. “Let Mater Dei win their title, let Harvard-Westlake win theirs and let us win one. It gives all of us a chance to be state champions.”

Competing against schools of similar size makes sense most of the time, but when a team is clearly better than most of its competition, moving up is a worthy option. Wouldn’t a state playoff game between Dominguez and Mater Dei be more interesting than one between Dominguez and La Habra Sonora?

Playing up to the competition also makes picking a No. 1 team easier. This week, Harvard-Westlake of North Hollywood (21-1) is the top-ranked team in the state by Cal-Hi Sports and in the Southland by The Times. The Wolverines are the defending Division III champions and, like Dominguez, they chose not to move up.

“I talked to a bunch of people, and most of them discouraged such a move,” Harvard-Westlake Coach Greg Hilliard said. “We’re trying to establish our program where we’re at, and moving up and down didn’t make a lot of sense.”

With Mater Dei, Dominguez and Harvard-Westlake three of the top teams in the state and each competing in different divisions, it will be difficult to pick the best one if they each go on to win state titles. In the only meeting between the schools, Harvard-Westlake defeated Mater Dei, 64-38, at Las Vegas.

“If Harvard-Westlake is your top team, then I guess there’s not much we can do to finish No. 1 if they go all of the way,” Otis said. “But our goals have always just been to win a section title and then the state title. The rest just falls into place.”

Having the best teams in the same division may upset the balance, but it would make being a champion mean much more.

Trying to convince the top teams of that is a different matter, however.

Long Beach Poly basketball standout Mike McDonald may sit out the remainder of the season because of a severe thigh injury he suffered last month.

McDonald, a 6-foot-2 guard, is the captain of the Jackrabbits, who are 16-3 and regarded as one of the Southland’s top teams.

The Stanford-bound senior sat out the last three games and is expected to miss another three to six weeks. The regular season ends Feb. 15.

Brea Olinda, the top-ranked girls’ basketball team in the Southland, suffered its second loss of the season, 64-61 in overtime, to Mater Dei last Saturday.

Lori Hurlbut led Mater Dei with 25 points.

“We were outplayed in every facet of the game and we beat ourselves,” Brea Coach Jeff Sink said after watching his team commit 24 turnovers.