Deflecting Pressure the Knight Way

Notre Dame High senior Monte Marcaccini learned a lesson about Bob Knight: There are few tricks the Indiana basketball coach won’t try.

Marcaccini, who has signed to play for Knight, asked the coach’s son, Tim, about reports that the Hoosiers had signed a 6-foot-8 player named Ivan Renko from the former Yugoslavia. Turns out, to the surprise of few, it was a hoax.

“They made it up to take some pressure off Indiana being No. 1 in the country,” Marcaccini said, relaying what Tim Knight told him.

When the ruse came to the attention of Notre Dame Coach Mick Cady, whose team also has struggled with the pressure of expectations, Cady replied: “That’s brilliant. I guess that’s why he’s coaching Indiana.”

ROUGH SEASON

Harvard-Westlake senior soccer player Dwight Angellini, who was dismissed from the team for kicking Notre Dame’s Ryan Herrera in the head in a Feb. 3 match, was having a tough time of it even before the incident.

Angellini, a two-time All-Southern Section player being recruited by several major colleges, said he has been a target all season.

“Every game people are hitting me, spitting on me,” Angellini said. “The first three times I touched the ball against Notre Dame I was fouled. A guy head-butted me in the face, and he got a yellow card. Every time I go into a game I get scared. I don’t know if I’m going to walk coming off the field. Every time they hit you they get up cheering like it’s football. I expected to get marked this season, but never the cruelty, the pride they took in hitting me.”

On a second-half throw-in against the Knights, Angellini said he received the ball and that Herrera “ran over me and kneed me in the leg. We both fell down and as I was getting up, I kicked at him. I didn’t mean to kick him in the head.”

Angellini said he has apologized to the Notre Dame team.

“Nothing justified it,” he said. “I just need to learn and grow from it.”

WRONG NUMBERS

The Buena girls’ basketball program has had its share of prodigious numbers in its years with Coach Joe Vaughan. But Vaughan wasn’t too happy with two statistics from Saturday’s 78-69 home loss to Northern California powerhouse Fair Oaks Del Campo.

Del Campo All-American Danielle Viglione scored 41 points, the most against Buena by one player.

“I don’t remember a time when a player even scored 30 points against us,” Vaughan said.

Buena did not shoot a free throw, another first. Del Campo, meanwhile, was 21 of 30 from the line.

“They definitely can’t go back to (Fair Oaks) and say they got homered,” Vaughan said.

JUDGMENT CALL

Last week, Providence knocked off Holy Martyrs in double overtime, 83-82, in an emotionally charged game at Providence. The teams ended up as co-champions of the Liberty League at 8-2, so stakes were obviously high.

Trailing by a point with four seconds left in the second overtime and its leading scorer, Barry Dabbaghian, out of the game with five fouls, Providence caught a break when Alex Resnevics was fouled while battling for a rebound in the corner.

Was there contact?

“Maybe that’s a home-court call, I don’t know,” Providence Coach Paul Sutton said. “You try to be gracious in winning, but I have to admit that we got real lucky.

“Probably 99% of the referees out there don’t make that call.”

Resnevics made both free throws to win the game.

SELL MY SOUL

Canoga Park still has a shot at the City Section 3-A Division playoffs, but last week’s 45-42 overtime loss to Birmingham was more than a little unsettling, Coach Jeff Davis said.

The Hunters held a 39-31 lead with 4:30 left, but blew the lead. What’s more, with the score tied, 39-39, at the end of regulation, they couldn’t make a series of shots from point-blank range that would have won the game.

With 10 seconds remaining, Demond Callahan missed from six feet. Jorge Silva missed a follow shot from the left side. Arthur Bradford missed a tip from the right side. Callahan then missed another tip.

Time expired.

Davis almost expired, too.

“It was ridiculous,” he said. “It was like the devil was in the bottom of the basket, knocking the ball out.”

Including the three-minute overtime, Canoga Park was outscored, 14-3, in the final 7 1/2 minutes of the game.

A DUNKIN’ DONUT

Granada Hills had not won a Northwest Valley Conference boys’ basketball game in two years. Somehow, some way, the Highlanders almost won two games in a week.

Granada Hills (3-16, 1-7) upset Reseda, 63-62, last Wednesday and held a 15-point third-quarter lead over El Camino Real two days later. In fact, the latter seemed to be a slam-dunk victory, when . . .

Tyrone Jackman, the Highlanders’ leading scorer, found himself alone on a breakaway and missed a dunk attempt. The ball caromed hard off the back of the rim and El Camino Real converted it into a bucket at the other end. From a potential 17-point lead to 13 points in a split-second.

“From then on, it was all over,” Granada Hills Coach Bob Johnson said. “Everything fell apart.”

El Camino Real won, 68-61.

GOING SOUTH

Kimberly Kelly always assumed that immigration was pretty much a one-way street. Earlier this month, she learned otherwise.

Kelly, the Cleveland girls’ basketball coach, lost her best player when Olivia Laguna returned to her native Mexico to live with relatives. Kelly said that Laguna (5-foot-6) was a freshman at Cleveland, even though she was 17 years old.

Laguna’s departure might make things a little easier for Kelly, communication-wise. Laguna spoke little English, and Kelly speaks limited Spanish.

“I’d have to try to tell her (what I wanted) in Spanish, and sometimes I got lost halfway through the sentence,” Kelly recalled with a laugh. “One time, I was right in the middle of a sentence and I just forgot where I was.”

David Coulson, Kennedy Cosgrove and staff writers Steve Elling and Jeff Fletcher contributed to this notebook.