It’s Goodby to Those Heady Days : For Fryer, a Star at CdM, a New Niche as a Freshman at Loyola

FRYER IS TOO MUCH FOR SAILORS . . . FRYER’S 41 PACES CORONA DEL MAR . . . FRYER SPECTACULAR IN CdM VICTORY .

Oh, those high school headlines. The scrapbook filler for games gone by. Other than driving a new Porsche or dating a cheerleader, basketball star Jeff Fryer couldn’t have been more popular at Corona del Mar High School last year.

He surfed and skied. He played volleyball and ran track. And he topped Orange County’s scoring charts, averaging 27.8 points a game--many coming far from beyond the top of the key.

But now, 50 minutes up the 405 Freeway, Fryer has become just another face at Loyola Marymount University. Though he’s been trying to grow a beard, Fryer can’t disguise the face that says, “I’m a freshman.”

Seated at the pregame training table in Pepe’s dining room at the El Dorado bowling alley, the players eat shrimp and mushroom casserole and drink root beer floats.

Fryer sits second from last at the end of the table, eating quietly. The upperclassmen do most of the talking.

“For a freshman, Jeff’s a total dude,” said Mark Armstrong, a junior forward. “He rounds out the team. He’s the beacher .”

Jokes of surf and sand follow.

“When Fryer came out at the Cal State Fullerton game,” Armstrong said, “the PA announcer said, ‘Here comes Jeff Fryer. He looks like he parked his surfboard outside the gym.”

“Hey Fryer, you going out for volleyball? They play that on the beach, don’t they?”

Sitting in the empty bleachers in Loyola’s Gersten Pavilion, Fryer looks down on the court being swept for the upcoming game.

“I really feel I fit in here,” he said. “(Though) they call me a rich kid and (say) I look and talk and act like Sean Penn and that surfer in ‘Fast Times at Ridgemont High,’ it doesn’t bother me.”

Fryer, a 6-foot 2-inch, 180-pound point guard, said that though he’s been surprised with the amount of playing time he’s received, there are a few things he’d like to change.

“I want to increase my shooting percentage,” he said. “It’s a lot harder to get a shot off here. It was a lot easier in high school. They just gave me the ball. I didn’t have to think about it. And there’s a lot more pressure to do good here.”

Pressure or not, Fryer has started four conference games and averaged 8 points and 2 rebounds, including an 18-point game high against Gonzaga last Saturday.

He is shooting 40.5% from the floor, 32.8% from the three-point line and 76% from the free-throw line.

It’s not quite the figures that made him a high school star, but neither coach nor athlete is worrying about it yet.

“Our key right now is just to get him in our rhythm of shooting,” Coach Paul Westhead said. “He doesn’t have his confidence yet. But he will. He’s earned it.”

Fryer will start when Loyola plays host to Chapman College tonight at 7:30.

Fryer hopes to regain his confidence and what he’s missed most of all: “Scoring 28 points a game. That, and all the publicity. My scrapbook’s kind of empty now.”