Holiday unflappable, but will he take wing?

Not that Jrue Holiday’s teammates necessarily want to see him rattled, but they do wonder. What would it take to get under his skin?

“I’ve never met a kid like that,” senior Darren Collison says. “Always has the same composure, always has the same look.”

Steady and calm, even on rough nights, and there have been a few of those at the start of his college career. The freshman guard has seemed a bit tentative once or twice but never had that deer-in-the-headlights gaze.

Maybe Collison and the other veterans on the UCLA basketball team should concoct something to fluster him in practice.

“Right,” junior Michael Roll says. “I’ll let you know next week.”

In the meantime, go directly to the source, the teenager with a ready smile and an easy manner. Is he really that poised? The question catches him by surprise, as if he’s thinking: Isn’t everyone?

There is a pause, an “um,” and another pause.

“That’s just the way I am,” he says.

But there’s a catch. The trait that makes him cool as sheet metal, allowing him to jump right in as a starter for the 10th-ranked Bruins, might also be the trait he needs to tweak.

If Holiday wants to be a star, he might have to turn up the heat.

The tough part

Composure has always been a big part of his game.

“You can see the court better when you’re calm,” he said. “You make better plays.”

Over at USC, Coach Tim Floyd, who scouted Holiday for tonight’s cross-town rivalry game at the Galen Center, says that when you watch him, “you see a complete player.”

Complete as in 10.3 points and 3.9 rebounds a game. Second on the team in assists and steals. Tough enough on defense that he often finds himself covering the other team’s best shooter.

And the Bruins have learned they can trust him down the stretch.

“I mean, he doesn’t make a lot of mistakes,” Oregon State Coach Craig Robinson said. “We were hoping we could force him into making some mistakes and we weren’t capable of doing that.”

This is a young man who arrived in Westwood as one of the top recruits in the nation, with fluid moves and a scorer’s touch. Early on, he had a dazzling performance against Florida International, eight for eight from the field, totaling 20 points in 19 minutes.

Still, there is a sense he could do more.

Holiday admits to having suffered nerves -- a crack in the armor -- when UCLA lost to Michigan at Madison Square Garden. At Texas, he struggled to guard A.J. Abrams, who torched the Bruins for 31 points, and shot only one for six from the field.

“A couple of plays, I got frustrated out there,” he said. “You have to brush that off.”

So far, he has taken a similar approach to his college career as a whole, all the hype that surrounds him, the expectations that he will dazzle immediately and go straight to the NBA this summer.

Even as his shooting percentage dipped over the last few weeks, the kid was trying to stay patient.

Just like Dad

The Holidays are an athletic family. Shawn and Toya both played college ball and their eldest son, Justin, is a forward at Washington. Jrue Holiday, who also has a younger brother and sister, takes after his father.

“Dad’s the quiet one,” he said.

Back at Campbell Hall School in North Hollywood, “Jrue was goofy like any kid who wants to have fun,” basketball Coach Terry Kelly recalled. “As humble and gentle as anyone you would ever meet.”

The kind of kid who swept the gym floor like everyone else and volunteered as student manager for the girls’ tennis team, though it turns out he had ulterior motives.

“You really didn’t have to do anything, just write down the scores,” he explained. “I got out of school early. We traveled to Palm Springs and Santa Barbara. And there was so much food every day -- I never had to bring a snack to school.”

The thing is, Kelly never saw Holiday get down. But over the course of four seasons, which included three state titles, he noticed something else.

“Jrue would get emotional on the floor,” the high school coach said.

Not in an outlandish or obnoxious way, but enough that people around him knew. Yet, since arriving at UCLA, Holiday says he has tried to temper that part of his game.

Maybe it has something to do with the challenge of stepping up a level.

Or maybe it has been a reaction to Coach Ben Howland’s style of basketball, tightly controlled, with a constantly rotating lineup.

“Coach obviously knows what he’s doing,” Holiday said, adding: “I’m not really the type to look for the glory or be the person who wants to be on the front cover of a magazine or the UCLA media guide.”

But lately, he’s been thinking about his high school days.

Getting mad

Over Christmas break, Holiday ran into an old friend, former Taft High star Calvin Haynes, who now plays for Oregon State. Haynes told him: You have to be more aggressive on offense.

A lot of people have been saying that.

“From coaches to old friends, guys I’ve played with,” Holiday said. “Or just random people.”

Even his mother. Toya is the vocal one in the family, an athletic director at Campbell Hall, and has been reminding him about when he used to get worked up during games.

“It was toward the refs,” he said. “I never got any calls.”

It wasn’t the sort of anger that resulted in shouting or technical fouls. Holiday used it as motivation, attacking the rim.

That’s why his mom has been encouraging him to recapture that feeling.

“Which is weird because in high school she would tell me to calm down,” he said. “Now she tells me I need more of an edge.”

Last weekend, in a tight, physical game at Oregon, he sprinted downcourt on the break and dunked hard over a defender, letting out a roar when he came down. His teammates said they had never heard him like that before.

Holiday smiled. “Maybe I need that aggressiveness.”

In other words, losing his cool every once in a while might just heat up his game.

Holiday is willing to give it a try. He even rolls his eyes at the thought.

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david.wharton@latimes.com