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SoCal High School & Prep Report

Bell-Jeff: A Little Bad News
But More Good News--(February 10, 1998)

Bell-Jeff is a team which was supposed to be a lock for the Santa Fe League title and was expected to go deep into the playoffs, possibly challenging for a Southern Section Championship and possibly a State title. Well, that's not what happened, as Coach Eli Essa's guards suffered without four starters who were expected to play: Three moved out of the area, and one, Kent Dennis, transferred to Cleveland where he is having some measure of success as the City Section's fourth leading scorer, averaging 20.3 ppg (447 points in 22 games).

But Bell-Jeff still has star Ruben Douglas who's bound for Arizona next year, and who is the areas leading scorer. As of the end of this last week, Ruben was scoring an astounding 33.8 points per game, and he has amassed 878 points in 26 games. There's no one even close to that average or number of points. The next highest scorer in Southern Section play is Mark Hull at Hoover, and he's averaging 27.8 ppg, and has himself racked up 639 points in three less games than Ruben's 26. And in City Section, Ruben is also ahead of the area's leading scorer Gilbert Arenas of Grant, who is averaging 29.9 ppg (688 points, 23 games).

So besides Ruben's scoring average, the fact that he's third in steals, averaging 4.0 per game, and is just one heck of a player, Bell-Jeff can also be proud of Mike West, who stepped it up this season. West is second in rebounding in Southern Section in the Valley region, averaging 14.1 rebounds per game, and he's also 9th in scoring average, putting down 21.4 points per game.

Bell-Jeff, however, got a little bit of bad news this past week. The number one player in assists in Southern Section, freshman point guard Chris Jones, will not play the rest of the season or in playoffs, due to academic eligibility problems, according to the LA Times. Too bad, because Jones was, according to the stats published today, tied for first in the assist leaders column, averaging 7.9 per game, having made 190 assists in 24 games. Chris really stepped up this year when called upon, but it looks like all that stepping up hurt his grades.

But even without Jones, Bell-Jeff is still managing to salvage the season pretty well. In addition to still being in contention for a share of the Santa Fe League title (if Bell -Jeff wins its last two games this week, and if La Salle loses on Monday against Mary Star), they also will make the playoffs regardless of whether they win the title.

But the really good news Bell-Jeff got about two weeks ago, came from Sean Doyle, who had played basketball for the Guards last year, but who decided to switch to soccer for this season. Even after the loss of the other four players, Doyle stuck with his committment to the soccer team, and played out his string there. But once that season ended for Bell-Jeff, Doyle asked Essa if he could play with the team, even as a practice player. Eli Essa took one look and said yes. But Essa told him he probably wouldn't play in games because it wouldn't be fair to the others who had worked so hard during the season.

But after watching him in practice, and seeing him rip rebounds away from the second leading rebounder in the region Mike West, Essa couldn't resist, and inserted him into the lineup. Since then, Bell-Jeff has won four out of the last five games. And things continue to look good for Bell-Jeff in the playoffs.

See, it's not over until it's over, and there's hope yet that Bell-Jeff will go deep into the playoffs.