One Small Step for Basketball : Scott Brooks Proves He Belongs at UC Irvine in Spite of a Major Shortcoming on the Court

Scott Brooks looks a little out of place on the same floor with nine other NCAA Division 1 players.

All right, who let the little guy on the court? Usher, show him back to his seat. Go back to the 6-foot-and-under leagues, pal.

Brooks has heard it before. Respect has been more difficult to earn because he usually has been smaller than most. So, he wasn’t surprised when reporters ignored him at UC Irvine’s annual Media Day in November.

“Yeah, no one came up and talked to me,” he recalled. “It didn’t bother me, though, because every where I go, it’s like that. I’m 5-foot-10, or 5-11 (the UCI media guide lists him at 5-11). I really don’t look like a basketball player. So I have to earn my respect every where I go . . . even if it’s just to a local gym. I’m usually not picked until last. Then, I start playing a little, and pretty soon I’m the captain. It happens all the time.”

It’s happening again. Brooks has started all 11 of UCI’s games this season. He leads the team in assists (44), steals (19), free throw percentage (.966) and three-point shots (9) and is averaging 10.8 points per game. He is third on the team in minutes played behind forwards Tod Murphy and Johnny Rogers.

All of this from a guy who was expected to come off the bench to allow fellow guards Mike Hess and Joe Buchanan to take breathers; a guy UCI Coach Bill Mulligan discovered by accident in last year’s State Community College Basketball Tournament.

Mulligan remembers the night he went to Fresno for the state tournament to see a player he had planned to recruit from Riverside College. Riverside was playing San Joaquin Delta in the tournament’s first round. Brooks was a Delta starter.

“They were playing in the last game,” Mulligan said. “The last game was supposed to start at 9, but it didn’t start until 11. I wanted to go out with the guys and have a drink, but I decided to stay. And that’s when I saw Scott.

“I’m really glad I stayed.”

Mulligan recruited Brooks with the idea of adding some depth to UCI’s guard positions, which were expected to be filled by Hess and Buchanan--both highly regarded, redshirt transfers.

“We figured him for the third guard,” Mulligan said. “Then, Hess got hurt early in practice and missed about two weeks. Scott got in there, and there was just no way to get him out. He went crazy that night against the Yugoslavians.”

Mulligan was referring to the Anteaters’ exhibition game against Club Bosnia, a team comprised mostly of Yugoslavia junior national players. In his first appearence in Crawford Hall, Brooks was 5 of 5 from the field and finished with 14 points, 7 assists, 6 rebounds and 4 steals. His aggressive play--and disregard for his well-being--made him an instant crowd favorite.

“He’s a crowd-pleaser because he’s a little guy who busts his tail,” Mulligan said. “A lot of little guys bust their tails, but aren’t talented. He’s talented. He can play.”

It’s surprising that Brooks hasn’t been hurt this season. He goes after loose balls as if they’d explode if he didn’t. In the Nevada Reno Tournament last week, his pursuit of a free ball took him off the court and into a towel boy seated in a folding chair beneath the basket, knocking the boy and his towel to the floor. Neither party was injured.

“I just play hard all the time,” Brooks said. “That’s the only way I know how to play. I love going for loose balls, diving on the ground, taking charges. I love doing things like that.”

But that style hasn’t exactly endeared Brooks to all of UCI’s opponents. Earlier in the season, one opposing coach became annoyed with Brooks’ harassing defense, and shouted an obscenity at him.

The remark was made out of frustration, something Brooks brings out in opponents.

“That’s what I try to do, because that’s what I don’t like,” he said. “I just try to do the things I don’t like people doing to me.”

This cockeyed, do-unto-others philosophy has its drawbacks. Brooks leads the Anteaters in one other statistical category. He has 35 personal fouls.

Brooks, the youngest of seven children, grew up in Lathrop, Calif.

“It’s right in between Modesto and Stockton, right along the I-5 freeway,” he said.

He attended East Union High School in Manteca, where he developed the high-arching jump shot he uses to hit three-pointers for UCI.

“I was 4-11 as a freshman,” he said. “The next year, I grew six inches. I was about 5-5, and weighed 125 pounds. I was a scrawny little thing.

“I’ve been playing against bigger guys all my life. I had to shoot over them, so I had to put a lot of arch on my shots.”

The rainbow jumpers helped him set school records for single-game, season and career scoring at East Union. He averaged 28.1 points per game.

From there, he went to Texas Christian University, the only major college to recruit him. An old friend of TCU Coach Jim Killingsworth was a high school coach in the Stockton area, and told Killingsworth about Brooks.

But after his freshman season, Brooks became disenchanted at TCU. Playing time was difficult to come by, and California seemed continents away. He decided to transfer, and enrolled at Delta, about 10 miles from Lathrop.

Mulligan stumbled onto him, and has enjoyed watching him collect floor burns ever since. Leaving TCU was somewhat of a gamble, but Brooks said he’s happy with where he ended up.

“When I transferred from TCU, I didn’t know where I was going to go,” he said. “I knew I’d go to a JC, but I didn’t know where I would go from there. It was kind of a scary thought. I was on scholarship at a Division 1 school. Going down to JCs, I could have hurt my ankle or something. But I was just hoping for the best. I came here, and I’m happy. This is for me.”

Brooks said his hometown of Lathrop is a far cry from the big buildings and rush-hour traffic of Irvine.

“It’s just a real small suburb of Stockton,” he said.

Real small. That sounds familiar.