The UT-San Diego boys’ basketball ratings deadline came a few hours early yesterday.  Disaster struck a little later for the No. 1,  and No. 5 teams.

Cathedral Catholic was stunned by No. 6 Army-Navy, 67-61, as 7-foot, 1-inch Cheikh (Chay) Ndiaye (En-die) dominated the shorter but quick Dons with a 25-rebound-22-point-10-blocked-shots performance in the Martin Luther King Showcase at Hoover.

Hoover, No. 5, was shocked by Horizon, 91-90, in overtime.

More upheaval is possible Thursday night at Point Loma Nazarene University, where No. 1 Cathedral and No. 2 St. Augustine collide.

First place votes in parenthesis.

Others receiving votes: Westview, 14-5 (5); Morse, 17-5 (5); Francis Parker, 10-5 (4); Santa Fe Christian, 111-5 (1); Helix, 13-5 (1).

Scott Webb and Jim Arnaiz weren’t joined at the hip.  It was more like at the leg.

Together three varsity seasons at Helix High, they would be inducted together into the school’s  Hall of Fame  in 2005.

Webb quarterbacked the Arnaiz-coached  Highlanders to a 12-1 season and the San Diego Section AAA championship in 1982.

The championship in Webb’s only season as a starter  was not necessarily more than what he accomplished as a sophomore and junior, seasons in which Webb may have gotten into the game for a dozen or so plays as Jim Plum’s backup.

While Plum set passing records, Webb made his way into the record book and took on a national profile as the best high school placekicker, ever.

He also was the Highlanders kicker as a senior, concluding his career with 207 points after touchdowns and 29 field goals.

Cincinnati Bengals coach Paul Brown was so distrustful of placekickers that Brown turned his back at the snap of the ball when one particular specialist attempted a field goal.

The Helix coach did not suffer from such anxiety.

Grossmont League opponents believed that touchdowns counted for six points at every school but Helix.  “For us, it’s seven points because of Scott Webb,” Arnaiz said in an interview with The San Diego Union’s Steve Brand.

“It’s a comforting feeling knowing he’s there,” Arnaiz told Brand.  “He becomes a real weapon in close games.”

“(The pressure of) kicking never affected Scott,” said Arnaiz.  “He was an outstanding kicker as a young kid, plus he was a three-sport athlete (football, basketball, baseball) and a good golfer.”

In a 29-0 victory over Granite Hills, Webb did something normally seen only in NFL games.  He kicked field goals of 37, 37, 37, 39, and 49 yards for a national prep record and added two extra points for a total of 17.

120X123

Webb kicked 120 points after touchdown.  He booted 33 in a row as a sophomore before missing a meaningless conversion in the 1980 Section championship game, then made  45 of 46 attempts as a junior and  42 of 43 in 1982.

“Scott has received most of his notoriety as a kicker,  but the thing we’re so pleased about is his complete development as an athlete,” the coach said in another interview.  “(Before) I think he sort of felt like he was on the fringe because he only kicked.”

Arnaiz won 213 games in his 28-season career, which spanned from 1973-99.  After an 11-20 start from ’72-’75, followed by a 4-4 season in 1976, Arnaiz’ program kicked into high  gear.

The former Cal Poly-Pomona athlete, who grew up in the Imperial Valley and played four sports at Imperial High,  posted a 200-58-15 record and .781  winning percentage in his last 21 seasons.

With Webb kicking and eventually playing quarterback, the Scots enjoyed a 34-4 run in 1980 (12-0), ’81 (10-3), and ’82 (12-1).

Many of Webb’s San Diego Section kicking records would be broken. Inflated scoring and Webb-inspired  kickers  pushed others in front, but Webb remained near the top in several categories.

Arnaiz would line up Scott against all of them.

Morse’s 31-28 victory over Orange Glen in the 3-A finals ranks among the most exciting of all San Diego Section championship games.

And that game followed Rancho Buena Vista’s 21-10, 2-A victory over San Pasqual, climaxing Rancho’s meteoric rise in the school’s second season.

Long runs, NFL-style passing, and  two of the County’s all-time coaches, David Lay of Orange Glen (12-0) and John Shacklett of Morse (10-2) competing against each other, made this a game to remember for the crowd of 12,611.

A quick bow to “Cowboy” Ken  Maynard.

Not to the 1930’s Western movie shoot-’em-up hero but to  the coach with the same name  who was Lay’s and Shacklett’s  mentor when the two offensive linemen played at Grossmont in 1956.

In 13 seasons at Sweetwater and Orange Glen, Lay posted a record of 102-34-5. Shacklett was 229-118-9 in 31 seasons at Morse and was in the middle of a three-year,  36-5 run centered around  Teddy Lawrence, who burst on the scene in this game.

Sophomore Lawrence knew no fear.

He intercepted Cree Morris’ pass deep in the Morse end zone, hesitated a moment, then took off on a record, 106-yard return with 2:30 remaining in the first half.

Awhile later, with halftime nearing, Lawrence stood in punt formation, saw something he liked on the right side of the defense and took off on a 54-yard touchdown run, the first half ending as he sped to the end zone.

BEST PLAYERS SHOW UP

Shacklett:  “They threw the ball so well with (Cree) Morris and that receiver (Jake) Nyberg. We played zone, not wanting to get beat, but down around the twenty we’d go man-to-man.

“The thing I remember most about Teddy’ interception is that all of the best players on the field were in about a 10-yard circle on that play. Ty Morrison pressured Morris and Darrell Lewis hit Nyberg as Nyberg was coming across.  Teddy had an open field.”

Shacklett quizzed Lawrence as he set up to punt as the half was ending.  “I said, ‘What are you looking at if the defensive end comes in to block the kick?'”

“It was a high snap,” Lawrence explained to Steve Brand of The San Diego Union.  “I saw number 2 (Lenny McGill) coming in at me and I faked outside.  I got a great block from Jimmie Rose and was gone.”

Brand’s game account noted that Jessie Campbell’s 54-yard touchdown run and German Puentes’ 38-yard field goal for a 31-13 fourth-quarter lead “all but broke Orange Glen’s back.”

But Morris, who completed 17 of 31 passes for 325 yards and three touchdowns, and Nyberg, who caught 12 for 207 and two TD’s, kept the Patriots coming.

Two touchdown passes by Morris and a late drive positioned Orange Glen at Morse’s 20. Three incomplete passes  left the North County squad still 20 yards away. Lay called for a game-tying field goal but Shannon Vinje’s 37-yard attempt was wide left.

“I just felt at fourth-and-10, you haven’t made it in three plays, you might as well get part of the championship,” Lay told Brand.

“We could have put twenty guys on Nyberg and he still would have caught all those passes,” said Shacklett. “The guy is amazing.”

So was Lawrence. “Teddy was a great player and great athlete, certainly our best quarterback,” said Shacklett, when asked to compare  Lawrence to the dozens of outstanding players he coached through the years.

Lawrence did not want to be a quarterback when he turned out for spring practice after his sophomore season, Shacklett remembered. “Teddy said he wanted to be a wide receiver;  I told him we didn’t have anyone who could throw the ball.”

The coach knew he wanted this 160-pound bundle of energy handling the ball on every play.

The play on words certainly was not original.

Roger Conlee and I referred to Bob Speidel as “The Watchman”, in reference to his last name and to the company that made millions of timepiece wrist bands.

But Speidel was in the forefront of basketball coaches in the early years of the San Diego Section.  He guided Helix to championships  in  1964 and 1966 in the pre-Bill Walton era.  A basketball lifer, Speidel had several other stops along the way and never left the game.

According to Bill Dickens of U-T-San Diego, Speidel  most recently was a San Diego State season ticket holder with friend and former Monte Vista and Grossmont College coach Felix Rogers.

Speidel passed away on Jan. 6, 2013, at age 80 from complications of lung cancer.  “What is really strange is that he never smoked a day in his life,” Rogers told Bill Dickens.

I was a prep writer for the Evening Tribune in 1964 when Helix  took on La Jolla for the San Diego Section title.  It was the first finals matchup between  city and  county squads. Hoover won in 1961 and ’62 against city opponents and Crawford defeated a city opponent in 1963.

La Jolla had been extended in a 78-70 semifinals win over Lincoln the night before and Helix had struggled but eliminated Chula Vista, 49-43.

La Jolla was 29-0 and featured a pressing defense and up-tempo offense that had run off  30 straight victories dating to the 1962-63 season.  Helix was taller and, at 25-3, a formidable opponent but slight underdog.

With 6-6 Al Skalecky, 6-3 Jim Sunderman, and 6-1 Ron Slocum in the front line (Slocum was injured early in the game and replaced by Larry Bailey), the Highlanders were taller but  not as quick as the Vikings’ 6-3 Rick Eveleth, 6-1 Bill Canning, and 5-10 Charlie Buchanan.

Helix turned the game into a 76-56 rout with a 15-2 run in the second quarter before about 3,300 persons at Cal Western University’s Golden Gym.

“Our strategy was to run on their press and get the ball downcourt,” said Speidel.  “We got off a lot of shots without setting up.

“I knew we had a size advantage,”  Speidel added, not expecting the Highlanders’ 46-22 advantage in rebounds.

“I’ve seen Helix three or four times and they never played that well,” said the stunned La Jolla coach, Bill Reeves.

Two seasons later, led by John Skalecky, John Ugrin, and Rick Barnes, Speidel’s Helix squad defeated Chula Vista 51-41.

“Bob and I co-owned a mountain cabin near Julian in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties,” said my Evening Tribune colleague and Helix graduate Roger Conlee.

“We spent some good times there around a blazing fire talking–what else?–basketball,” said Conlee.  “He loved the game and was a great student of the game.”

CATHEDRAL UNANIMOUS NO. 1

U-T Sportswriters-Sportscasters poll
First-place votes in parenthesis

Lincoln coach Vic Player, on his 100th career victory:

“It’s wonderful to reach a milestone and be considered among the elite coaches in San Diego County.  It’s great to be up there with coaches I admired when I was young and first came to San Diego from Chicago, people like Duane Maley (San Diego), Bennie Edens (Point Loma), and Herb Meyer (El Camino).”

A 14-0 loss to Point Loma in Week 2 left Player with 99 wins. The loss was reversed early in Week 7 after a decision came down against the Pointers, who forfeited because they had used an ineligible player in the game against Lincoln.

Although Player’s team had scored three victories in the next four games, Player considered the 28-6 triumph over Hoover in Week 7 to be as meaningful.

“We got the word that the loss became a victory but we still stuck to business, stayed focused,” said Player.

Lincoln finished with a 9-2 record, losing 40-29 to San Pasqual in the AA semifinals.

Player, who had stepped aside for three seasons in the mid-‘eighties, coached through 1993.  His 17-season record was 131-58-2, a .691 winning percentage.

After five weeks of nonleague games and tournaments in far-flung locations, San Diego Section basketball teams begin the run to the playoffs in earnest this week.

Cathedral emerged as the frontrunner in the third UT-San Diego poll with all 13 possible first-place votes.  The Dons got a head start on most other clubs when they opened the Eastern League season last Friday with a win at home over St. Augustine 67-64.

No. 2 Hoover beat Canyon Country Canyon 78-55 on Saturday.  No. 4 Army-Navy dropped a 62-55 decision to Foothill of Henderson, Nevada, in the host school tournament.  No. 5 La Costa Canyon won its division of a Palm Desert tournament by knocking off unbeaten Mission Viejo 70-58.

Preseason No. 1 Lincoln lost star player Tyree Robinson for the season with a broken foot.  The Hornets were blown out in two of four games in the Westlake Village Oaks Christian tournament and are 6-5.

Others receiving votes: San Marcos (12-3,  7 points), Eastlake (8-5,  3), Santa Fe Christian (9-4,  3), Morse (13-3,  2), Parker (7-5,  1).