Carlander’s Style Isn’t Very Flashy but Gets Job Done

In the mail this week, winging nationwide to hundreds of voters for All-American basketball teams, is a poster featuring several men who work on the USC campus.

The poster is headlined “USC’s Skilled Labor.” Posed in front of the statue of Tommy Trojan are a forklift operator, a groundskeeper, a carpenter, a painter, a statue cleaner and Wayne Carlander.

Wayne Carlander is one of the most efficient workers in the campus’ lunch-pail brigade. He is responsible for cleaning off backboards, sweeping down the court on fast breaks, picking up garbage and depositing it in the basket, hammering opposing forwards, nailing 10-foot jump shots and dusting off the USC basketball record book.

This season, Carlander’s handyman work is a major reason the Trojans are cleaning up in the Pac-10. They’re in first place right now. Seriously.

It’s a strange phenomenon, and several thousand curiosity seekers are expected to show up Thursday and Saturday when the Trojans play host to Arizona State and Arizona in big games.

Up till now, if you phoned the Sports Arena to inquire what time a Trojan game started, they would ask, “What time can you get here?” This weekend, they may have to open up a second hot-dog stand.

People are even starting to notice Carlander, the Trojans’ 6-8 senior power forward. They’re noticing that he never comes out of a game, and that he plays well. In conference games, he is USC’s leading scorer and percentage shooter, and second-leading rebounder.

Two or three weeks from now he will pass John Rudometkin and become the school’s all-time leading scorer.

Carlander does all this with a minimum of flash and flair. Take the dunk shot, for instance.

“I’m not that obsessed with it,” he said.

Not that obsessed with it? Check this out: Carlander is 6-8, has started 107 straight games and scored 1,374 points, and he is dunkless! Oh-for-USC. Same as Cheryl Miller.

It’s not that Wayne can’t dunk. He’s no skywalker, for sure, but your grandmother could dunk if she stood 6-8.

“I guess I haven’t had the opportunity,” Carlander said with a shrug. “A lot of the time it’s late in the game, you’re tired. . . . As long as I score, that’s what counts.”

Carlander is friendly and accommodating enough, but he talks about as flashy a game as he plays. For instance, ask him if he considers his 107-game iron-man streak a big deal.

“No, because I didn’t miss any games in high school, either,” he said.

He also didn’t miss many shots in high school. He was a phenomenal scorer and prolific rebounder at Ocean View in Huntington Beach. They called him The Franchise.

At USC, they called him Wayne and moved him closer to the basket when the coaches noticed his knack for maneuvering in traffic and getting off shots over and around people, some of whom were taller and all of whom could jump higher.

He’s not real fast, either, but Carlander is never left in the dust by a running team, including his own.

“I’m obviously fast enough ,” he said, which is as close as he gets to bragging about himself.

As the cliche goes, all Wayne can do is score and rebound, and pass and play defense.

If fans haven’t noticed him much, opponents have. During his USC career he has been involved in semi-altercations with such players as Patrick Ewing and Keith Lee. Two seasons ago, Coach Ralph Miller of Oregon State said Carlander was a “vicious player.”

“I’m not a dirty player,” Carlander said quietly, when asked about the physical side of his game. “Sometimes you do stuff on the court that other people have done to you. A lot of times they end up getting you . I play aggressive inside.”

If he’s not a thug, he is at least the type of guy you just hate to play against, the pain-in-the-butt type. The type who screens you off the boards, plays in your face on defense, hits those layups and 10-foot jumpers that just irritate and embarrass the heck out of you. The type who can push and shove when push comes to shove.

And he almost never rests. Carlander has played every second of the last four games, including the 50-minute double-overtime win over UCLA.

How ‘bout that, Wayne? Do you consider it an honor that coach Stan Morrison deems you too valuable to come out of the game, even for a minute?

Carlander gave it some thought.

“It makes you feel like you’re respected, or whatever,” he said.

The interview winding down, my notebook chock-full, I thanked Carlander and wished him luck.

He walked off quickly, like a man with things to do.

Probably had to go punch a time clock, or a power forward.