PREP NOTES

Just whine, baby: More than any other season, football coaches this year seem to be waging a war of words in the newspapers, over all sorts of crimes--real and imagined. The latest to sound off is Downey Coach Phil Dunaway, who was upset with El Toro Coach Mike Milner’s postgame comments after Downey’s 14-7 victory last week.

It seems that for the second week in a row, El Toro was late arriving because of bus trouble, which Milner was asked about after the game. Two weeks ago, it made headlines when the Chargers arrived only moments before their kickoff at Carlsbad.

Said Milner: “Once again the buses were our biggest problem for the second straight week. The No. 1 bus did not get here until 6:20, and it’s hard to get focused on a game sitting in a bus.

“I believe the bus problems were responsible for us being so lifeless. We had a few chances, but we made some mistakes. This was another frustrating night.”

Apparently, it was too much for Dunaway to stomach.

Dunaway told the Long Beach Press-Telegram this week:

“I know Milner, and Milner’s basically a good guy. He probably said some other things, but that was the stuff that was in the article, and it’s pretty hard to read that stuff and think anything else but that he was blaming their loss on the bus being late.

“That’s (nonsense). They were out there warming up before we were. We suited up 26 kids. . . . (El Toro) brought about 50 players, and we put 11 out there and they played well and won. I didn’t see any buses out there helping us.”

Then, he fired this salvo:

“I’d like to see them complain about the buses this week. They play (Rialto Eisenhower, ranked No. 1 nationally by USA Today) at home, and ‘Ike’ is probably going to kick their butts.”