THE HIGH SCHOOLS / Brian Murphy : Miller Looked Hard; Huskies Looked Better

The North Hollywood High coach shut the door behind him and stared at his basketball team seated in the conference room.

He stared at Dana Jones, the team’s 6-foot-6 do-everything center. He stared at Harry Marks, the 6-3 shooting forward. The rest of the team--point guard Robert Hill, off-guard Tommy Byrdsong, forward Eric Jackson--also fell under his baleful glare.

“Coach,” the team pleaded on this Monday early in February, “we aren’t going to have any time to practice.”

“Don’t you worry about practice,” Steve Miller snapped. “We’ve got things to discuss in here far more important than shooting and layups.”

Running through Miller’s mind were the events of the previous Friday--an embarrassing 65-55 overtime loss to Reseda that cost North Hollywood sole possession of the Mid-Valley League title.

Miller let every player know exactly what he thought of him. He let each player know how much he hated his selfishness, his attitude.

Two hours of psychological catharsis later, with players given an opportunity to lambaste each other and, of all people, their coach, the Huskies emerged a changed team.

Need evidence? Head down to the Sports Arena this Friday. North Hollywood will be making an appearance in the City Section 3-A Division final, against Fremont, four weeks to the day after the loss at Reseda.

“The whole thing changed after that,” Miller said. “Since then, our whole focus has been tremendous.”

“Tremendous focus” translates to five consecutive wins, including three in the playoffs. Playoff wins over favored Hamilton and nemesis Grant stand as testimony to the renewed fervor with which the Huskies played.

“Some of us were having problems against each other,” said Marks, who scored 33 points in the Grant game. “We let each other know what was going on, and it brought us that much closer.”

Add North Hollywood: Grant Coach Howard Levine was on the other end of the North Hollywood turnaround and was duly impressed by what he saw.

“North Hollywood played to a level that we haven’t seen,” Levine said. “If they keep that up, they’ve got a definite chance of winning the City title.”

Levine was heavy of heart as he bade farewell to his team, a gritty cast that achieved more than most expected at the start of the season. Levine’s tear-filled eyes after his postgame speech was testament to the emotion felt.

“It’s a tough, tough way to go to sleep,” Levine said Saturday. “It’s emotional knowing you’re not going to be together with the same kids. It’s emotional knowing you’re not going to the Sports Arena.”

Long and winding road: Back in December, having lost to Fairfax in the St. Monica tournament, Cleveland stood at 1-3 under first-year Coach Marc Paez. Last Friday night, the Cavaliers capped a strong run at a City 4-A championship with an exciting, heartbreaking 91-90 overtime loss to perennial power Crenshaw.

“You can change the order there,” Paez said Saturday. “Make that heartbreaking first, exciting second.”

It had seemed, after the Fairfax game, that this Cleveland team would wither in the shadow cast by the ghost of teams past. Paez, as it turns out, felt otherwise.

“I don’t want to sound like I have all the answers, but I knew we would get off to a slower start with a new coach coming in,” he said. “A priority was to keep the kids believing. Slowly but surely, we started to put things together.”

Cleveland took off at the right time and stormed through the playoffs to the semifinal meeting with Crenshaw. Along the way, the Cavaliers avenged the Fairfax loss.

“Our goal was to get the kids peaking at the end of the season,” Paez said. “And I think we did that.”