The Hoover Cardinals earned their seventh trip in 10 years to the San Diego Section finals last night, overcoming the deep and long San Marcos Knights, 68-63.

Hoover (28-5) takes on La Costa Canyon (27-4) Saturday in Viejas Arena for the San Diego Section II championship.  The Cardinals defeated the Mavericks 56-55 earlier in the season.

After leading 3-0 at the outset Hoover did not take the lead again until the fourth quarter.

A turnout of about 1,200 rocked the East San Diegans’ 77-year-old gymnasium, with encouragement from coach Ollie Goulston, who exhorted the mostly Hoover crowd to turn up the already piercing volume.

The Cardinals lagged throughout, trailing 13-8, 20-11, and 30-21 at the end of two quarters.  Their shots began to fall in the second half, although Hoover still trailed, 43-35 late in the third quarter.

Damonte Holiday, who at one point in the fourth quarter had to be helped off the floor, apparently felled by cramps, fired a 27-point fourth quarter which put away the visitors.

Goulston’s youngsters, including four underclassmen in the starting lineup, were a measure of balance.  Miles Nolen-Webb led with 17 points, followed by Holliday (16), Tyrone Johnson (14) and Dominique Whitfield (11).

Freshman Johnny McWilliams, Jr. led San Marcos (26-6) with 16. The Knights play Lincoln Thursday night in the Southern California playoffs “play-in” game.

St. Augustine students residing in “The Pit,” were off their game last night.

When the score reached 79-20, the vocal cheering section in a  corner of the Saints’ tiny gymnasium began serenading visiting Mar Vista players with “This game is over!  This game is over!”

The game actually was over barely a minute after it began, the Saints stunning the Mariners with eight consecutive points.

Coach Mike Haupt’s team pressed the visitors throughout, and unleashed a suffocating, man-to-man defense in winning the San Diego Section Division III first-round playoff,  87-22.

The Saints (22-4) led 29-8 after one quarter and 53-16 at halftime.

The home team entertained a turnout that included San Diego State associate head coach Brian Dutcher with an explosion of dunks, breakaways, and three-point bombs that appeared to be launched from nearby 32nd Street.

Haupt emptied his bench fairly early in the third quarter when the Saints were leading 64-18.

Though never in it, Mar Vista (13-16) hustled and played hard all the way.

Next up for the Saints is a quarterfinals game against Mount Miguel Saturday, February 22, at St. Augustine.  Mount Miguel defeated Del Norte 74-53 last night.

Cathedral Catholic, top-seeded in III and favored to meet the Saints in the finals, walloped San Diego High Tech 93-30 in its first-round “test”.

HUNDRED POINTS OR BUST

In another why-was-this-game-even-considered Division V mismatch, Horizon’s girls defeated Foothill Christian, 101-4.

The blowout reinforced the idea that too many unqualified teams are invited to the playoffs, serving as sacrificial lambs in the name of more brackets and more revenue.

Will it be once every 57 years?

That’s how long it took El Cajon Valley High to win its first league basketball championship, a feat not accomplished since the school opened in the 1955-56 school year.

The Braves (19-8) have yet to enter the UT-San Diego basketball poll Top 10 but  their exploits have created a stir along Main Street in the city sometimes known as the Big Box.

A 69-61 victory over Mount Miguel, in which Andre Nikkita scored 41 points (30 in the second half) gave El Cajon Valley a 7-1 league record and championship of the Grossmont Valley circuit.

The Braves open the San Diego Section II playoffs at home against Serra (16-10) Wednesday night, Feb. 21.

Nikkita, the County’s leading scorer with 764 points, is averaging 28.3 points in 27 games. He needs nine points to break the school record of 772, set by Kemmy Burgess, who averaged 29.7 in 26 games in 1997-98.

Scribe Bill Dickens has been following East County teams since the 1960s.

“They had some good teams in the Bill Walton era (1969-70 at Helix), but who could tell?” said Dickens, citing the achievements were such of the Highlanders, 61-2 in two seasons,  that all else was overshadowed.

SEEDINGS SET

If playoff seedings, determined after last Friday’s final regular-season games, stay true through the first three rounds, these Nos. 1 and 2 seeds will meet in the finals of each division:

I, Mission Hills-El Camino.

II, La Costa Canyon-Hoover.

III, Cathedral Catholic-St. Augustine.

IV, Army-Navy-Mater Dei Catholic.

V, Horizon-Foothills Christian.

UT-San Diego weekly poll:

First-place votes in parenthesis.

It was a question never answered, because it seldom was asked.

Which was the better team? The 25-1 San Dieguito Mustangs, who won the Class A championship, or the tradition-rich, 24-3 Hoover Cardinals, who won the AA title in the 1960-61,  first season of the CIF San Diego Section .

Some 50 years later a reader of this website suggested I write a story about that San Dieguito team.

My initial reaction was, why didn’t  I press the issue in 1961 and get Hoover coach Charlie Hampton to address the subject after the San Dieguito coach declared his Mustangs team the best?

Or confront CIF commissioner Don Clarkson and have him explain why the Mustangs wouldn’t be allowed to participate in the AA (large schools) playoffs, despite their almost-unbeaten record against bigger schools.

I was a cub reporter on the Evening Tribune, out of Lincoln High, and I thought all things started and ended with the Eastern League, of which Hoover was a member.

My colleague, Roger Conlee, covered County schools and leaned heavily to the Grossmont and Metropolitan leagues.  The Avocado League was held in slightly more regard than the tiny Southern League.

This was a terrific San Dieguito team, led by  6-foot, 7-inch senior John Fairchild, who would be a standout at Brigham Young University and play for the Los Angeles Lakers and other professional teams over a six-year period.

Conlee and I believed otherwise, I guess.  There were weeks when the Mustangs were not even in the Tribune’s Top 10, compiled by the two of us. Late in the season San Dieguito’s 16-1 record wasn’t good enough.  Sweetwater (5-8) and Point Loma (7-8) were considered more worthy.

North County squads, other than Escondido, didn’t get much currency in those days.  Bias definitely favored the city.  The population swing and subsequent North County power emergence still was years away.

Roger Conlee finally took a trip late in the season up U.S. 101 to Bing Crosby Hall, a cavernous barn on the Del Mar Fairgrounds which served as the Mustangs’ home court.

Conlee saw San Dieguito dispatch Vista, 49-40, before about 2,000 partisans.  The victory was  the 17^th in a row  in a streak that began after a 54-47 loss to Helix in the season’s opening game.

Mustangs coach Dick McCracken, who posted a 40-6 record in his two seasons, spoke out after the game.

“I’m sure proud of this team,” McCracken told Conlee.  “I only hope we can get into the large school playoffs (Avocado League squads were consigned to the small schools alignment, reserved for schools with less than 1,500 enrollment).

Then McCracken elaborated:

“The only point I’d like to make is that we beat the two teams (Hilltop and Kearny) that beat Hoover. I think we can beat Hoover, too.  We have better shooters.  The only thing which might beat us would be the coaching.  I’m no Charlie Hampton.”

(Hampton was the legendary Hoover coach who compiled a .774 won-loss percentage in 11 seasons and posted a 223-65 record).

Coronado coach Don Valliere weighed in on the subject after a 67-49 loss to Fairchild and company.

“San Dieguito without question has the best basketball team in the County,” said Valliere.   “They may not play defense as well as Hoover, but all in all they’re better.”

The final Tribune Top 10, published before the playoffs:
1—Hoover, 21-3.
2—Hilltop, 19-5.
3—Lincoln, 16-7.
4—Point Loma, 13-9.
5—San Dieguito, 22-1.
6—Crawford, 14-8.
7—Clairemont, 12-10.
8—Grossmont, 12-8.
9—Chula Vista, 10-10.
10—Escondido, 13-10.
10—Ramona, 21-1.

San Dieguito rolled through the Class A playoffs, beating El Cajon Valley, 73-57, Kearny, 66-53, and Sweetwater, 54-46.  Hoover won the AA title, defeating Chula Vista, 63-36, Hilltop, 56-49, and Point Loma, 66-53.

There would be no matchup of city and county powerhouses.  Section commissioner Clarkson  hadn’t considered allowing the Mustangs into the AA playoffs.

So the season ended.

With apologies to Aretha Franklin, the Mustangs also deserved a little R-e-s-p-e-c-t!

With nine days until the first round of San Diego Section playoffs,  Cathedral Catholic still is No. 1.

UT-San Diego’s CIF basketball ratings did not change from the previous week.

One through 10, no one moved up or down, although Army-Navy cleared up a nettling mark on its record.

The Warriors, 21-4 and ranked second, defeated La Jolla Country Day, 72-36,  in a rematch of its upset,  44-43 loss to the Torreys Jan. 15.

St. Augustine defeated La Jolla 76-41 and Olympian 74-41 last week and commemorated a special moment in the Saints’ history.

OLD RIVALS MEET AGAIN

Tom Shaules, who set a County record of 60 points in a 102-38 win over Crawford in 1958, was honored at halftime of the Olympian contest, which the Saints led 56-16 after 16 minutes.

Among those who came to see Shaules was an old rival, San Diego High’s Arthur (Hambone) Williams, who was part of two hard-fought games with the Saints in 1958.  Shaules’s team won the first game on the Saints’ floor, 62-56.  Hambone and the Cavers won the rematch at San Diego, 65-57.

MAVERICKS GET RESPECT

La Costa Canyon battled state No. 4 Etiwanda before bowing 56-51.  The Mavericks are fourth in San Diego but the highest-ranked County team as judged by Max-Preps, which has them 17th in Southern California.  Cathedral is 19th.

First-place votes in parenthesis

Team+Record+Points+Last Week

Others receiving votes: Mt. Carmel (16-11, 4 points), Torrey Pines (16-9, 3), Westview (18-7 , 3), Mater Dei (20-5, 2), Santa Fe Christian (17-7, 2).

Army-Navy, gathering steam behind the long, shot-blocking, 7-foot, 1 inch Cheikh N’Diaye and slick-shooting guard Devin Watson now is second in the UT-San Diego boys’ basketball poll.

N’Diaye had six blocked shots and 20 rebounds to with his 20 points and Watson scored 29 as the Warriors eased past Santa Fe Christian 64-53 in a Coastal League battle last week.

Earlier in the week Army-Navy defeated Horizon 71-54.

The Cadets still trail Cathedral Catholic in the poll, although they earned a 67-61 victory over the Dons last month.

Also receiving votes: Torrey Pines (15-8, 6 points); Santa Fe Christian (16-6, 1); Westview (16-7, 1).