Ventura College Does an About-Face : College football: Rosales gets tough, Pirates get an attitude while going from 0-10 to 3-0.

Once the shock and numbness wore off, George Rosales sifted through the rubble looking for clues.

“We re-evaluated ourselves,” said Rosales, the Ventura College football coach. “As a group, we modified our behavior. We looked at everything we did last year.”

There was plenty to peruse, most of it grisly.

Last season, his first in charge of the team, Rosales and his players sunk into gridiron hell. The Pirates went 0-10, were shut out six times and didn’t score a touchdown until the fourth game.

Now they can’t lose.

The Pirates are 3-0, are ranked 21st in the state by USA Today and are arousing the interest of people in a town where the Ventura men’s basketball team reigns supreme. In fact, school officials say they expect about 3,000 at Ventura’s nonconference game tonight at 7 against No. 20 Fresno City (3-1) at Ventura High, a far cry from the sparse crowds that seemed to arrive in the same minivan last season.

For Rosales and the few sophomores who returned, the transformation from doormats to winners has, if nothing else, restored their frizzled confidence. They have gone from campus lepers to instant celebrities and they definitely like the feeling.

“Everybody is supporting us,” said Scott Probasco, a center from Buena High. “They ask, ‘When do you play?’ Last year, nobody admitted it if they went to our games. Even my friends were making jokes. But I told them it was going to be different this year.”

Probasco is one of only six starters from 1993 who decided to stick it out. He said something told him the futility would end, that better games were ahead. He guessed right.

“We all tried to convince ourselves that this year was going to be different,” Probasco said. “Last year, summer practice and weightlifting was optional. This year, we had summer practice with pretty much the whole team. It was a complete turnaround from last year. This year, if you miss a practice you won’t play in one quarter of the next game.”

The new, hard-nose approach evolved from questions Rosales asked the players after last season.

Throughout his 25-year career coaching football, including assistant jobs at Glendale and Rio Hondo colleges and a highly successful stint running the Burroughs High program in the early 1980s, Rosales had seldom faced such professional calamity. So he asked the players for perspective, for their thoughts about what went wrong.

“Some of the players said we (coaches) were too soft,” Rosales said.

That’s all he needed to hear. Out went the excuse-me brand of football and in came the hematoma-inducing kind, complete with a pro-set offense to replace the run-and-shoot that did neither last year. The coaches also launched an aggressive recruiting plan and saw it pay off when about 100 prospects tried out for a team that now has about 85 players.

“We went out and worked our butts off to recruit players and we attracted some damn good ones,” Rosales said. “We told them there were a lot of opportunities for them to play here.”

Many of those who listened and took the bait already have paid dividends. Running back Ivan McCrae, from North Salem High in Salem, Ore., is fifth in the Western State Conference in rushing with 221 yards.

Greg Johnson, a receiver from Thousand Oaks High, is among the conference leaders with 10 catches for 116 yards. And Noah Walsh, a cornerback from Ventura High, and Bud Smeby, a free safety from Palmdale High, each have two interceptions.

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Other newcomers also have been instrumental in the team’s success.

In a 38-0 season-opening victory over West L.A., cornerback DeWayne Mathis had eight unassisted tackles.

The following week, in a 20-12 nonconference victory over Antelope Valley, nose guard Shawn Popken had 10 solo tackles, two sacks and an interception, and was named one of the WSC’s defensive players of the week. Against L.A. Southwest on Sept. 24, quarterback Aaron Triana completed seven of 13 passes for 122 yards and one touchdown to lead the Pirates to a 31-0 victory.

And the returning sophomores, like running back John Patton (180 yards in 14 carries), linebacker David Davis and defensive tackle Jim Starr, have been outstanding. They belong to the small core of veterans who could have left but chose to give Rosales and his system another shot. Their actions spoke volumes to the coach.

“Those who stuck with us, you have to respect them and love them,” Rosales said. “They are team leaders.”

Their efforts to do that last season, if they indeed tried, were monumentally wasted. But now they can show the way and have their way, too. After the first game, for instance, players dumped a bucket of water over Rosales to anoint the victory. It was such an emotional outpouring that the coach, still aglow with the excitement, sometimes waxes metaphorical about it.

“The dousing with the water was a purification, a washing-away of the stain from last year,” Rosales said.

By this time last season, the Pirates were in a black hole. They had been outscored, 106-0, in three games and morale was plummeting with the cavalry nowhere in sight.

“Around the middle of the season it became really difficult to go to practice,” said Jeremy Davis, a guard from Hueneme High. “You knew you were going to get the . . . beat out of you (in the games).”

Most of the few Ventura fans in the stands every week also knew it, but they still went to the games to encourage the team. It wasn’t easy. Nancy Davis, a financial aid officer at the school, remembers the depressing scenery.

“The first thing we would notice was that the parking lot was practically empty at every game,” said Davis, who has worked at the college for eight years. “This season, the first time we went we had to park far away from the field because there were so many people there. It’s great to see.”

Said Weldon Washington, a wide receiver from Oxnard High: “Last year, after the first couple of weeks, we were thinking about scoring. And after that it was trying to get a little closer to winning. Now, we feel we can win every week.”

Some critics might argue that the Pirates are due for a fall, that they haven’t played strong teams yet and that their game against Fresno City will tell how good they really are. But Brent Carder, the Antelope Valley coach, feels differently. The Marauders defeated Ventura, 35-0, last season and Carder sees a team with tremendous potential.

“They are definitely an above-average community college team,” Carder said. “I would say that they are a strong team. I certainly hope we don’t face anyone as strong the rest of this season.”

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If the Pirates keep winning, they could accomplish one of the biggest turnabouts in recent WSC history. No team since 1980 has gone from the conference cellar to first place in consecutive seasons. Santa Barbara nearly did it, winning the North title in 1991 after finishing fifth in the six-team division the previous season, but nobody else has come close.

Rosales would love to take a crack at it, but for now he is happy with how his program has risen from the ashes.

“Football sets the table for the whole school year,” Rosales said. “It’s nice to go on campus and have people compliment you. People like to be associated with a successful program.”