Louisville Is in Good Hands With Ellison : Center, Now Known to World as Never Nervous, Carries Cardinals

Pervis Ellison, the 18-year-old freshman center who had just won the MVP award in the process of leading the University of Louisville basketball team to the national collegiate title, had his back to the wild celebration gushing all over the court at Reunion Arena Monday night.

Ellison was standing with the two senior starters, Billy Thompson and Milt Wagner, and with Coach Denny Crum, waiting to be interviewed on national TV. While Crum smiled and waved to fans, Thompson broke into private little bits of laughter and Wagner took deep breaths and congratulated himself with little salutes of his clenched fists, Ellison looked blankly at the floor and fiddled with the mouthpiece sticking to his braces.

He actually looked bored.

Brent Musburger leaned over to tell him that he’d be the first interviewed, after Crum, and Ellison gave Musburger a little nod. No problem. No big thrill, either. Just another day on the court.

That’s Never Nervous Pervis.

Sounds corny, but never was there a more fitting nickname.

Here’s a freshman who not only held his own against the seniors of Duke, the No. 1 team in the country, in the NCAA championship game, but he actually got stronger as the level of pressure intensified.

Ellison had the big rebound and the big basket with 39 seconds left and the big one-and-one from the free-throw line with 27 seconds left to put the game away. He finished with 25 points (shooting 10 for 14 from the field for 71.4% and 5 for 6 from the line), 11 rebounds, 2 blocked shots, 1 steal and 1 assist.

Ellison was playing with four fouls over the last five minutes and he said that he “was limited” because of it, but he still waded right into the fray when Louisville guard Jeff Hall missed the shot the Cardinals had to have.

Crum had called a timeout with 48 seconds left in the game and 11 seconds left on the shot clock for the Cardinals. The call was to get the ball to either Hall or Wagner and clear out to let him go one-on-one. But Duke’s defense forced Hall to put up a bad shot.

Ellison said: “I saw that the shot was falling short, so I went up for it. I thought I was the only one who jumped. There didn’t seem to be anyone else up there with me.”

From Hall’s point of view, Ellison was up there first because “he has such great instincts.”

Wagner said: “He just overpowered everybody. I was in there, looking for the rebound. But there was Pervis, with his long arms, above everyone. Then he played it smart, like he always does. He kept the ball up high and put it back. He didn’t bring it down and give them a chance to strip it.”

Ellison’s rebound basket gave Louisville a 68-65 lead with 39 seconds to play.

At the other end, Ellison grabbed the defensive rebound and sat down with it in the paint as the official whistled a foul on Mark Alarie.

Ellison, ignoring a suggestion from the Duke fans that he “Choke Choke” sank both ends of his one-and-one to give Louisville a 70-67 lead with 20 seconds to play.

Was he nervous then?

“I haven’t been shooting free throws that well in the tournament, so that was all I did during the shoot-around today,” he said. “Once I made the first one, I sort of relaxed on the second one.”

That would suggest that he was not altogether relaxed on the first one. But it didn’t show.

As Wagner explains: “He’s so calm looking and so quiet all the time, you’d never know it if he was nervous. I can’t think of a time, on or off the court, that I ever thought he was nervous.”

Ellison, however, said: “I’m pretty sure I’m nervous at times. That (Never Nervous) is just a name that got tagged onto me.”

But even Ellison couldn’t come up with a solid example of when he had ever been nervous.

No wonder he doesn’t play like a freshman.

Ellison became the first freshman to win the most outstanding player award for the Final Four since Utah’s Arnie Ferrin did it in 1944. The only other Louisville player named to the all-tournament team was Thompson. Duke had three players named--guards Tommy Amaker and Johnny Dawkins and forward Mark Alarie.

Asked if he had known that this 6-9, 205-pound forward, really, from Savannah, Ga., would be this kind of a phenom as a rookie, Crum said: “We didn’t promise him he would start. We told him he’d have a real good chance to play a lot. But we recruited him as a forward. He came into the starting lineup as a center when Barry Sumpter became academically ineligible. He has played real well for us all year. But, honestly, I didn’t know he would be this good.”

Wagner, too, was going on and on about how all the players had known, early, that Ellison had a lot of natural ability for the game, for rebounding and for shot-blocking. But he admitted to being surprised that Ellison had turned into such a scorer.

Alarie, too, said that Duke was aware of Ellison’s rebounding ability and shot-blocking ability. But, Alarie said: “He made some athletic moves around the basket that surprised me. As far as his offensive ability, he surprised me.”

Ellison was the only one who didn’t seem to be surprised. But, then, who can read that impassive face?

Asked, finally, how he felt, Ellison said: “I feel like a winner.”