SoCalHoops High School News

High School Team Preview:
Garden Grove HS--(Nov. 26, 1999)

Garden Grove HS is located at 11271 Stanford Avenue, in the City of Garden Grove, and they play in the Garden Grove League of Southern Section, and are also a part of the Garden Grove Unified School District. The school has an enrollment of 1890 students which would place it in Division II-AA for purposes of playoffs if, as and when they ever make it back there.  Last season the team finished a dismal 1-22 overall and 1-11, and while they look to improve their record this year, the Orange County Register still has them set to finish dead last in the Garden Grove League, something we're really questioning, given the fact that they have one of the taller teams in the league with six returning varsity players, the most of any team in the league.

This team preview, like the rest of the Garden Grove League team previews, is admittedly short in length, and it's also short on much analysis or substance when it comes to the players listed on each team's roster.  We have not spoken with second year head coach Ken Frank because, as we've said before, we just don't have the resources to speak with every single coach of every team in the Southern Section prior to the start of the season, since there are more than 500 schools in the Southern Section alone.  We want to get as many previews up as possible, and so in order to do that, we have to rely to an extent, sometimes greater and sometimes not at all, on the traditional print media, aka the local papers. In this case, we're relying almost exclusively on the LA Times and the Orange County Register, and the short previews they published this week on November 25, 1999, which was compiled by Curtis Zupke of the Register, and in the Times preview articles published on November 23 in the OC Edition which were compiled by Paul McLeod and Peter Yoon. And while it's not much, it's all we've got.

According to the preview article on Garden Grove published in the LA Times on November 23,  second year coach Ken Frank ". . .doesn't pull any punches but figures the Argonauts will win a few more games than they did last season. "They're a hard-working group of outstanding classroom students," he said. "However, [they're] a work in progress as far as competing as a team and learning how to win."  Starters Greg Benoit, a 6-2 senior guard, Nick Davis, a 5-10 junior guard, and Aaron Sadler, a 6-2 junior forward, are back, as are lettermen Paul Guzman, a 6-1 junior forward; Luis Perales, a 5-9 senior guard, and Robert Revelle, a 6-4 sophomore forward."

Even the Register, while picking the Argonauts to finish dead last in the league, still said "The Argonauts should be improved with returning starters Benoit, Davis and Sadler."  Whether they finish last or actually manage to develop some chemistry and learn how to win, this will be a team that will be challenged by other league teams such as Bolsa Grande, which has solid talent, and by Pacifica, another team which knows how to win. We don't have all of the roster, since neither the Times nor the Register published the complete listing of players, but here's what we know:

On paper at least, there would seem to be no way that this team will finish last, given what the rest of the league looks like, and if we didn't have any other frame of reference, we'd be tempted to pick them as high as third in the Garden Grove League.  But whether they can start to win and learn to play together, will depend a lot on how they respond in the early preseason, which gets started for them on December 4.  Unlike a lot of their league compatriots, Garden Grove is not playing a particularly tough preseason, and they'll only be at two preseason tournaments, the Avalon Tournament which is not noted for being overly competitive, and the Katella Tournament, where they'll see some stiffer competition.  Still, what they are missing in preseason tournaments they're making up for in single preseason games against teams like Sunny Hills, Western, Saddleback, and Costa Mesa.  Here's a look at the 1999-2000 season schedule:

 
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