Sporting Life

Will Farrell has yet another sports comedy coming out this weekend with the ABA parody “Semi-Pro.” These movies always seem to good for about four funny quotes but you have to sit through an hour and 40 minutes of Farrell playing dumb to get them. The Onion reports that the NHL is offering him a ton of money to make a stupid hockey film.
Farrell is promoting “Semi-Pro” a ton on ESPN, including a segment with him playing horse against Bill Walton. I think Walton is actually funnier then Farrell (for proof, check out this clip of Walton making verbal love to Boris Diaw), and it seems Farrell may actually be a better basketball player than Walton. Also, if you’ve never seen Frank Caliendo’s impression of Walton, please watch this.

The Knights boys and Seahawks men’s basketball teams got a little ink in the Feb. 18 issue of Sports Illustrated (Dale Earnhardt Jr. is on the cover). The schools are listed in a story about the Dribble-Drive Motion offense they run variations of. The online version of the story (here) doesn’t have the list, but it’s definitely worth a read. The Sentinel has done a couple of similar stories on Soquel and Cabrillo recently. Last year, Ryan Phillips wrote this piece on the fast-break trend around basketball. I did another story looking at some of the offenses in the area a couple of weeks ago.

As promised, here are my picks for the girls teams in a hypothetical Santa Cruz County All-Star game.

North County draws from Santa Cruz, Harbor, SLV, Scotts Valley and Soquel. South County draws from Aptos, Watsonville, Pajaro Valley, St. Francis and MVC.

NORTH COUNTY
Starters
Guard: Sarah Takahashi, Santa Cruz
Guard: Hannah Passafuime, Soquel
Forward: Rachel Gregory, SLV
Forward: Caroline Sayer, Scotts Valley
Center: Olive Kersey, Harbor
Reserves
Malia Santos, Santa Cruz
Trisha Davila, Soquel
Alex Price, Scotts Valley

SOUTH COUNTY
Starters
Guard: Lindsey Sotomayor, Aptos
Guard: Annette Ruvalcaba, Watsonville
Forward: Rochelle Welsh, St. Francis
Forward: Molly Rank, MVC
Center: Katherine Brown, St. Francis
Reserves
Sarah Kulich, Watsonville
Janelle Nakamoto, Watsonville
Jessica Steif, Aptos

Who wants to make these All-Star games happen?

With the NBA All-Star Game coming up in two weeks, I thought it would be fun to make up a Santa Cruz County all-star game. We’ll have one team representing North County and the other from South County.

The North draws from Santa Cruz, Harbor, SLV, Scotts Valley and Soquel. The South draws from Aptos, Watsonville, Pajaro Valley, St. Francis and MVC.

Here are my picks for the boys teams:

NORTH COUNTY
Starters
Guard: Felipe Mendez, Soquel
Guard: Evan Fletscher, Scotts Valley
Forward: Daniel Cross, Soquel
Forward: Justin Hightower, Santa Cruz
Center: Cameron Karjala, Harbor
Reserves
Nick Beevers, SLV
Quinn Gruber, Harbor
Andrew Mosgrove, Soquel

SOUTH COUNTY
Starters
Guard: Robert Carrancho, Watsonville
Guard: Ryan Rocha, Aptos
Forward: Kraig Mitchell, Watsonville
Forward: Zach Scurich, St. Francis
Center: Daniel Johnston, Aptos
Reserves
Justin Contreras, Pajaro Valley
Dominic Delfino, Watsonville
Nick Ingram, Aptos

Whom am I leaving out. I’ll make up a girls team early next week.

A few very quick thoughts before I settle in for a Sunday of watching football:

- The Santa Cruz boys are clicking, especially senior forward Justin Hightower, who had two 25+ points games this week. The 5-1 Cardinals have two huge games against Soquel [4-1] and Aptos [5-1] coming on Tuesday and Thursday this week.

-What a win for the Cardinal’s girls Friday night. Down by 11 going into the fourth quarter at home against SLV, Santa Cruz beat the Cougars 14-1 in the fourth quarter to win.

- This is a banner year for Wildcatz hoops. The boys team just won its 18th game of the season and is undefeated in the MBL. Not to be outdone, the girls team is 12-5 overall and 3-0 in the MBL, also in first place. Annette Ruvalcaba is averaging over 16 a game to lead the team. She transferred from St. Francis over the summer. The Sharks would be Division V state championship contenders if they still had her.

Harbor girls basketball coach Nick Adams won his 400th game as Pirates head coach today. What a cool moment for a guy who has given a lot to the community. Adams downplayed the milestone saying his favorite part of being a coach has been getting to know the kids and they deserve the credit. I probably wouldn’t have even known win No. 400 was coming up if his wife hadn’t told me at the beginning of the season. We’ll have a story in Friday’s paper looking back on Adams career.

A few thoughts about the local high school basketball season:

- The Soquel girls are currently undefeated in the SCCAL, though their ride hasn’t been as smooth as expected. The Knights needed a fourth quarter comeback to beat Santa Cruz last week. I caught the end of their game against Aptos, and as expected, Hannah Passafuime is scoring at will.

- It was fun watching Santa Cruz against Harbor Friday night. The Cardinals got their first win in the SCCAL, and finally got their offense clicking. Malia Santos is very quick, and thrives in their full court pressure defense, getting several steals resulting in easy lay ups on the other end. Point guard Sarah Takahashi also stood out. She’s always the smallest player on the court, but always drives hard to the lane and sees the court very well. She creates a lot of easy baskets for her teammates.

- SLV senior forward Rachel Gregory is one of my favorite players in the county. She hits the floor hard and often, diving after every loose ball. She has to lead the county in floor burns and forced jump balls. By the way, she’s also averaging over 14 points per game.

- The boys SCCAL title is even more up for grabs than I expected. After four games, Soquel, Aptos, Santa Cruz, and Harbor each have one loss. The Pirates are playing so much better in league than they did in preseason. If it wasn’t for a desperate second-half comeback at home by the Cardinals on Friday, Harbor would be 4-0 in the SCCAL. Senior center Cameron Karjala is a player to watch. Few teams can match up with his size and he protects the rim on the defensive end.
Aptos and Soquel played the game of the week on Thursday, with the Mariners earning a big win on the Knights’ home court by coming back from a 13-point deficit. Soquel provided a fantastic atmosphere for the game with a full band and big crowd.

- Watsonville came back from its long break rusty, but managed to shake it off in time to beat Seaside in overtime and start off undefeated in the MBL.

Just got back from a vacation in Hawaii. Sports highlight of the trip had to be watching Georgia cream Hawaii in the Sugar Bowl at a crowded bar on Kauai before satellite service went out all over the island, saving Warriors’ fans the suffering of watching the Bulldogs dominate.

The trip let me catch up on some some sports stuff as I got to be a fan again for a week. I saw the Sharks worked there way up to the No. 2 seed in the West, and my friends are still asking me what’s wrong with the team. The Sharks are just fine, but there is something wrong with the ice at the Shark Tank according to San Jose Mercury hockey writer David Pollack.

Another thing, the Australian Open starts next week. This ESPN piece helped me catch up on the big tennis story lines.

The last two years of my life have been ruled by work and school, but 2008 looks promising. I turned in my last final a few weeks ago, which means my time away from the Sentinel won’t be spent doing homework. I finally have a chance to read something other than anthropology books, and take full advantage of living in one of the most beautiful places in the world. I’m glad this is a leap year so I have an extra day to reach some of these goals.

Surf: When people learn I live in Santa Cruz, they always ask if I surf. I want to be able to tell them I’ve done it at least once.

Play pick up basketball: I’m 5-foot-10, can’t jump, and shoot about 25-percent from the field and 15-percent from 3-point land. If you’re looking for a player like that for your weekend hoops game, my e-mail is rmoses@santacruzsentinel.com.

Play tennis: I played all four years of high school and loved it, but stopped once I got to college. I’m better at tennis than I am at basketball, so e-mail me if you need a doubles partner.

Hike: Sometimes I forgot we’re surrounded by red wood forests. I need to start taking a few Sunday afternoon hikes and exploring them … once football is over.

Go to the driving range: I’ve spent the last year unwinding from work by writing midterms. This year I’m going to try hitting the crap out of golf balls and see if my blood pressure drops a few points.

Study Sabermetrics: Maybe becoming even more of a baseball nerd won’t help me with my non-sports related resolution of finding a girlfriend, but I really want to understand how EqA is calculated for some reason.

Read: I haven’t read a book for fun since August.

No Fantasy: I wrote in this blog a while ago that I was retiring from fantasy sports, but then some of my Sentinel colleagues peer pressured me into joining the office football league. As always, I stopped paying attention after Week 3. I’ll be fantasy free in ‘08.

Blog more: Check. Only 365 days to go. How will you be spending them?

I saw the Celtics stomp all over the Kings 89-69 at Arco Arena while I was back home for Christmas. Here are a few things I noticed:

-Double teaming Garnett doesn’t work. He’s too good of a passer and even if Pierce and Allen aren’t open, James Posey will be.

-Triple teaming Garnett doesn’t work. The Kings trapped him multiple times at the high post and down in the block. He fed someone a wide open jumper everytime.

-The Kings went on a couple of runs when they pressed and got lay ups, but they couldn’t get into it very often because they can’t shoot.

-Arco has lost that lovin feeling. It used to be deafening in there. The biggest cheer Wednesday night was when they showed Natalie Gulbis sitting courtside.