Cougars

Nathan Call of Capistrano Valley High School and Yleana Carrasco of Anaheim have been named Southern California Prep Athletes of the Year by the First Interstate Bank-Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles. Call, who will attend Brigham Young University on a basketball scholarship in the fall, was a three-sport star for the Cougars. He helped the basketball team win 100 games in four seasons, including a 27-3 mark this year.

Cerritos College gave College of the Canyons a painful lesson in rebounding and defeated the Cougars, 77-72, on Saturday night in a Southern California women's basketball playoff bracket final at Canyons. Cerritos (28-5) doesn't have a player taller than 5-11, but the Falcons outrebounded the taller Cougars, 49-38. That might have made the difference in a game that was close most of the way.

Before, it only seemed like Azusa Pacific might never beat Montana's Carroll College in football. Now it's official. In its last NAIA game before moving to the NCAA Division II level, Azusa Pacific dropped a 17-14 decision to Carroll in a playoff quarterfinal Saturday in Helena, Mont. The Cougars led the defending national champions until late in the game, but Carroll produced a clock-eating, game-winning 18-play, 78-yard drive that chewed up 8 minutes 25 seconds and ended in a one-yard touchdown run by Chance Demarais with 1:51 left in the game.

With due respect to Glenn R. Stewart's credentials as a zoologist, his solution for dealing with a cougar believed to have killed three dogs in the San Gabriel Mountain foothills--that the animal should have been trapped and relocated elsewhere in the wild--left me wondering, Where is this elsewhere ? Many other zoologists would contend that the two most likely outcomes of such relocation would be, one, placing the cougar in habitat unsuited to its species, resulting in its starvation and death; or two, placing it in suitable habitat that, given the large numbers of cougars in the state today, would have put it in direct competition with another of the big cats, resulting in those two cougars eventually fighting each other over hunting territory, one or both of them possibly being killed.

Dwayne Scholten scored 22 of his game-high 23 points in the second half as Washington State came from behind to post an 82-77 victory over Pepperdine in a nonconference basketball game Saturday night. The Cougars broke a three-game losing streak to improve their record to 3-4. Pepperdine fell to 2-3. Pepperdine was leading 37-34 at halftime and took a 60-53 lead with less than 10 minutes remaining before WSU staged its comeback.

Houston quarterback Gerald Landry scored three touchdowns and became the first player in the school's history to gain 2,000 total yards in a season Saturday when he led the Cougars to a 24-20 Southwest Conference victory over Rice. Landry rushed for 104 yards in 28 carries and completed 11 of 20 passes for 144 yards. The Cougars, who represented the SWC in the Cotton Bowl last season, finished with a 4-7 record. The Owls, completing their second season under Watson Brown, finished 3-8.

UCLA faces a Houston team run by another cookie-cutter quarterback from Southlake (Texas) Carroll High School. David Piland replaced Case Keenum as the Cougars' quarterback this season. He completed 53 of 77 passes for 580 yards and four touchdowns in a 56-49 loss to Louisiana Tech last week. Piland , a sophomore, led Carroll to an 11-2 record in 2009. He was another in a line of successful Carroll quarterbacks. Chase Daniel (Missouri) and Greg McElroy (Alabama) are two former Dragons who went on to illustrious college careers.

They were nervous at the beginning and nervous at the end, but all that mattered to the players on the Ventura High girls' soccer team was that they went home winners. The Cougars upset host Chaminade, 2-1, on Saturday in the first round of the Southern Section Division II playoffs, scoring in the first half and hanging on for the victory.

Fullerton College Coach Hal Sherbeck failed for the second straight week to win his 200th game Saturday night as Taft defeated the Hornets, 51-27, in Fullerton District Stadium. Taft's victory marked the first time in the series that the visiting team has won. The Cougars' 51 points were the most ever scored against a Sherbeck team. Fullerton (0-2) is off to its worst start since 1964. In a game dominated by the offense, Taft's ability to make the big play provided the difference.