December 8, 2016 Page 5 Hawthorne Revving up for Ocean League Basketball By Adam Serrao The Hawthorne Cougars head basketball coach may be nicknamed “Jello,” but he’s looking for his team to be anything but floppy this season. In what has traditionally been an extremely competitive Ocean League, David “Jello” Gray is looking to guide his team where it hasn’t been since he took over the club in 2013--to the top of the Ocean League standings. With a great core group of returning seniors, aided by a few young stars on the team, Gray and the Cougars will look to improve on a season from a year ago that failed to yield even one victory in Ocean League play. It has been a rough go for Gray since he assumed head coaching duties for the team. When he began his tenure, it was the 2013-‘14 season and he took over a team that wasn’t necessarily supposed to compete against the superior lineups of the Ocean League like Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and Lawndale. His premier season yielded an overall record of 7-17 with only one win in league play (1- 9). Things didn’t get much better for Gray in the 2014-‘15 season. The Cougars went from 7-17 to 5-21 and still only mustered one victory in league play. That brings us all the way up to last year. Gray’s team produced seven wins again--but instead of attaining one victory in league play, the team fell to 0-10. Needless to say, Jello is looking to get things shaking in his fourth year with the team. If there is anything true to say about Gray and his Cougars, it’s that they are consistent. The team is clearly looking to improve on its last place finish from a year ago, but hasn’t gotten started on the right foot so far in the early going this season. Two straight losses to Leuzinger and Westchester Secondary Charter School have gotten Hawthorne out to an early 0-2 start. Anyone looking at the team from a macro point of view must be readying themselves for another disappointing year. Coach Gray is out to prove everyone wrong, though, and has a lot of season left to do it. Despite his team’s 42-point opening day loss that included only a five-point output in the fourth quarter, the Cougars remain optimistic. Gray will look to two returning seniors to lead his club in forward Justin Moore and guard De’Sean Oliver. Aside from those two players, Gray has an entirely new team. Clearly, all of the blame can’t be place on Jello’s shoulders with a team that experiences so much turnover on a yearly basis. Even still, you won’t hear Gray making any excuses. He’ll look to get things turned around for his team as soon as possible, beginning with a positive showing in this year’s El Segundo Tournament. INGLEWOOD HIGH The Inglewood Sentinels basketball team is coming off of an extremely successful season in which they battled for first place all year long. Redondo High unfortunately came out on top in a Bay League that competes for every single win. Despite the Sentinels’ second place finish, they went 22-9 on the year and enjoyed a successful 8-2 league play showing. Inglewood was able to defeat Redondo in what was one of the team’s most impressive victories of the season. A 59-55 win helped catapult the team into the playoffs where there was no stopping head coach Pat Roy and his talented roster. The Sentinels pulled out a 66-50 victory over Torrey Pines in the first round of the CIF Division I playoffs, but fell in the second round to Crespi in what was a close 69-62 game. This year, Roy will look for continued success and hopes to take another step forward in the Bay League standings and playoffs. So far, his team is off to a great start. Led by Miles James, Inglewood gathered its most impressive victory of the season last Friday night when it defeated Serra by a final score of 55-47. James notched 23 points on the night to lead all scorers. Christian Bradford added to Inglewood’s effort with an impressive 13 rebounds and four blocks, while the big man also came through with 11 points. James and Bradford will lead a high-powered Sentinels team all season long that will now turn its sights to a home matchup with Taft before a short Christmas break. LAWNDALE HIGH The Lawndale Cardinals share the Bay league with the Hawthorne Cougars, but have been experiencing much more success as of late. A 15-14 season a year ago saw the Cardinals go 5-5 in league play. While it seemed like a relatively average showing, Lawndale was able to muster a third place standing in the Ocean League and make it into the playoffs. The Cardinals used the playoffs as a springboard to go on a run. They beat Torrance in the first round and then Temple City in the second round before finally succumbing to Santa Barbara with an 84-69 loss in the quarterfinals of the CIF Division 2A playoffs. Lawndale is back this year and looking to improve on the success from a season ago. Head coach Dave Miller and his team entered the Providence Tournament where they began the season with a victory over AGBU of Canoga Park. Since then, the Cardinals have lost two in a row--but in a very young year, there’s time to get back on track. Lawndale will look to get things going again in the Paul Sutton Tip-Off Classic before a brief Christmas break kicks in GPSBMMTDIPPMTr For Clippers, It’s Do or Die By Adam Serrao The Clippers have been the best team in Los Angeles for the better part of a decade now. It’s certainly no easy task unseating the traditionally mighty and powerful Lakers. Being kings of the Staples Center is something that carries with it a lot of weight. That weight is something that head coach Doc Rivers and stars of the team Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan have had to carry on their backs. The team has had bragging rights over the Lakers for what seems to be an eternity now. With a slowly emerging Purple and Gold squad and a quickly aging Clippers roster, it has now become do or die for a team that has seemingly always taken a backseat in L.A. “When Chris Paul joined the Los Angeles Clippers five years ago, everyone thought that the team was destined for greatness.” When Chris Paul joined the Los Angeles Clippers five years ago, everyone thought that the team was destined for greatness. A trade that was denied by the NBA that could have sent Paul to the Lakers wound up with the All-Star point guard setting up home on the other side of the Staples Center. Paul certainly set a tone of winning in the locker room. The Clippers have made the playoffs every year since his arrival. Despite the team’s relative success, they have always fallen a bit short of expectations and have still failed to make it past the second round of the playoffs. When teams continuously fall short, things never end well. Either a marquee player gets shipped out or the coach has to go because his message simply isn’t being received any longer. Rivers hasn’t exactly lost the locker room yet, but the guys on the team haven’t necessarily gotten along with each other in the recent past either. With free agency coming up this offseason, the Clippers could face the loss of many of their key pieces to the club. “When you have multiple alphas, multiple guys in a lot of TV commercials, there is always going to be some tension and clashing,” Clipper guard J.J. Redick told ESPN.com. “We won 17 straight in [2012-13],” Chris Paul said, “but the spirit wasn’t right.” Griffin then chimed in saying, “We had rifts.” He later followed that up by explaining, “I never had a problem with Chris,” meaning that he, and probably many more teammates, have obviously had their share of problems with Paul in the past. All of those problems that are currently trying to be swept under the rug, combined with a team that is continuously falling short of expectations, can lead an owner to lean towards shaking up the roster in a major way. Paul, Griffin, and Redick all enter the free agent market this summer, assuming that the first two exercise the options built into their respective contracts. Judging the league by how players now have the propensity to team up in order to win a championship the easy way, it’s simple to see how both Paul and Griffin will certainly go their separate ways in the offseason, even if the team should be fortunate enough to win a championship. Winning a championship isn’t an easy thing to do, though, especially against teams like the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers. That being said, the Clippers best--and perhaps last--shot at winning a title is here and now in the 2016-17 NBA season. When the season began, it looked as if the shot the Clippers had to win that championship had a great chance to come to fruition. A team that had its season ended early in the playoffs once again last year came out strong to start the year, going 10-1 through the first 11 games. The Clippers wound up going 14-2 for one of the best records in the league. Then, the downfall came. A three-game losing streak to the Detroit Pistons, Indiana Pacers and Brooklyn Nets put the team back behind the San Antonio Spurs and the Warriors in the standings. L.A. responded with a nice win over the reigning champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, but now people’s ears have been raised, waiting to see how the rest of the season might possibly play out. Twenty-five games is obviously too little a time to judge a team, but when taking away the microscope that focuses solely on this season and this season alone, it’s clear to see that the time that this team has left is minimal at best. Not only will the Clippers have to navigate through a Warriors team that has now been bolstered by the acquisition of Kevin Durant, but they’ll also still have to find a way to get past the likes of Greg Popovich and the Spurs. Should they do that, LeBron and the Cavs will be waiting. If Doc Rivers and the Clippers don’t win it all this year, they’ll have to deal with the departure of key players from their roster and a young, up-and-coming Lakers team that has traditionally owned Los Angeles and is only getting better and even more exciting to watch. This is the year that the Clippers must prove themselves. This is the year for Rivers and the SFTUPGIJTDMVCUPSFBMJ[FUIBUJUTEPPSEJFr years ago by Spirit in Gusev Crater on Mars. Their report was recently published by Nature Communications. The question naturally arises whether what Spirit found on Mars might also have been influenced by life. “Mars exploration has reached a stage where we can start looking for biosignatures,” says lead author Ruff. On Earth, fossils are an everyday example of a biosignature of past life. But biosignatures can take more subtle forms such as organic molecules trapped in rocks. Biosignatures can also include physical structures such as compacted mats of microorganisms called stromatolites, found in various environments on Earth. No lander or rover on Mars has yet detected any fossils. So scientists assume that any Martian biosignature would be small—think Looking Up Hot Spring in Chile May Show Press release from Arizona State University, Provided by Bob Eklund Two geo-scientists at Arizona State University have made a discovery among hot springs in Chile that may spur scientists to revisit a location on Mars explored several years ago by NASA’s Spirit rover. The discovery involves fingerlike structures that form in the hot spring deposits by processes that combine biological and non-biological activity. The Chilean hot springs are at a place called El Tatio and lie at the edge of the extremely dry Atacama Desert, one of the best “Mars analog” sites on Earth. Co-authors Steve Ruff and Jack Farmer, of ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration, report that El Tatio produces silica deposits with structures influenced by living organisms that appear nearly identical to those found eight microscopic—and difficult to identify, let alone even find, on a planet with as much surface area as all of Earth’s land areas. In 2007, NASA’s rover Spirit was exploring next to an eroded deposit of volcanic ash dubbed Home Plate in the Columbia Hills of Gusev Crater on Mars. The rover’s right front wheel motor had failed, and as the rover dragged the stuck wheel like a plow across the ground, it uncovered a rich deposit of pure silica surrounded by outcrops also rich in silica. This is a mineral commonly found in hot springs and geysers like those in Yellowstone National Park. Several years later, Ruff learned about the El Tatio hot springs from a scientific journal. The hot springs are among the highest known active thermal springs on Earth (over 14,000 feet). At night, even in summer, temperatures at El Tatio often drop below freezing, and by day lots of ultraviolet light from the Sun comes through the thin, dry air. “We went to El Tatio looking for comparisons with the features found by Spirit at Home Plate,” says Ruff. “Our results show that the conditions at El Tatio produce silica deposits with characteristics that are among the most Mars-like of any silica deposits on Earth.” These characteristics compare favorably with the Martian Home Plate silica outcrops, Ruff explains. “The fact that microbes play a role in producing the distinctive silica structures at El Tatio raises the possibility that the Martian silica structures formed in a comparable manner—in other words, with the help of organisms that XFSFBMJWFBUUIFUJNFur
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