HE’S MAKING A POINT : SDSU Coach Jim Brandenburg Wants Bryan Williams in Control

The stat sheet was making its familiar post-practice round among the San Diego State basketball players. Bryan Williams, the Aztecs’ junior point guard, grabbed it for an instant, then passed it to the next player in disgust.

He did not acknowledge the figure that showed him leading the Aztecs in average minutes played. He looked past the column that had him first on the team in assists. He did not mention the one that said he led the team in steals.

His eyes wandered beyond all that and focused on what he has always used to measure his worth to a basketball team.

“Nine point seven,” Williams said. “That’s all I’m averaging. Nine-point-seven points. Look at that.”

By this time, the sheet had fallen into the hands of Rodney Hawkins, the senior team captain, who is averaging a modest 12 points himself.

“There is more to basketball than scoring,” he said, sounding as much like a coach as a teammate.

“I know,” Williams acknowledged. For a moment, it appeared as if this bit of wisdom had found its mark. But only for a moment.

“But 9.7,” Williams repeated. “That’s terrible.”

Two games are left in the regular season and the reshaping of Bryan Williams--from a guard used to playing as he pleased into a disciplined major-college point guard--remains incomplete.

It finds Williams entering the Aztecs’ Western Athletic Conference game against Colorado State (tonight at 7:35 at the San Diego Sports Arena) still split between the player he was and the player Coach Jim Brandenburg wants him to become.

“I still have some little shaky points out there on the court,” Williams said. “And there probably will be as long as I play for him.”

Williams cannot help but smile as he says this. He understands as well as anyone the fragile relationship he has developed with Brandenburg. Theirs is not so much a love-hate relationship as it is a clash of methods.

Williams has become a symbol of SDSU’s frustrations and successes in its first year under Brandenburg. The two have tugged and pulled all season--Brandenburg trying to mold Williams into a player who plays the game on the court as the coach thinks it on the bench; Williams trying to hold on to what has worked best for him in the past while striving to incorporate what Brandenburg says he wants.

It is a relationship that has been through some of its toughest tests on the court. But it found a deeper meaning through the sharing of the emotional trauma caused by the death of family members.

“I don’t think anyone can understand that until they’ve gone through it,” Williams said. “It leaves you so torn.”

It was a feeling that Brandenburg did not understand fully until he faced it three weeks ago with the death of his father in Wyoming.

When Williams left the team in the middle of a trip to Utah and Brigham Young to be at the bedside of his dying grandmother in St. Louis in early January, Brandenburg had difficulty reconciling the responsibilities of family and team.

“At the time I felt that he could have organized (his departure) a little bit better,” Brandenburg said. “But looking back on it realistically, I was being a little selfish.

“I guarantee you that it’s easier for me to relate to that after the loss of my father. There is a lot of hurt anytime you lose a loved one.”

That sense of loss is something player and coach have come to share. It is an experience that has helped both place in perspective their struggles on the court.

Williams sees himself as an offensive-minded player, one who makes things happen. It is a perception developed over years of playing a wide-open style of basketball at St. Bernard High School in Playa del Rey, at Cerritos College and in Los Angeles summer leagues.

Ask Williams after a game what went wrong or right, and the answer always hinges on the running game.

“Everyone on the team likes to get out and go,” Williams said. “Everyone wants to run.”

Brandenburg said that in a different year, with a different team, he might agree with Williams. But not this season. Brandenburg has tried to shape the Aztecs into a disciplined offensive team, a plan he said he needs to compensate for the team’s lack of depth.

He has asked Williams to slow the tempo, cut down on mistakes and keep the Aztecs disciplined on offense. The results have been mixed.

Williams leads the team in assists (132), steals (50) and minutes per game (36). But his 42.9% shooting (81 of 189) is the worst among the Aztec regulars, and he leads in turnovers (99).

Part of the problem has been that Williams has been called upon to do so much. As the Aztecs’ most reliable ballhandler, Williams has found himself taking on an inordinate amount of responsibility in breaking presses. And with starter Tony Ross the only other available scholarship guard, Williams has found himself playing almost every minute of every game.

“I know we’ve asked an awful lot of him,” Brandenburg said. “We’ve asked these kids to do some miraculous things.”

For Williams, the demands have been centered on turning him into a guard that fits the offensive style of Brandenburg, who views Williams’ progress as the natural adjustment from community college basketball.

“When he came in, he had had more the idea that a lead guard was a scorer rather than a setup playmaker,” Brandenburg said. “Getting us into our offense, running the half-court game, these things are important to us. He had never been asked to do those things before.

“Every coach expects different things out of their guards. It’s hard to change every one of their habits in a short period of time. He will have much better decision-making ability next year. He will have much more confidence from a leadership standpoint. Knowing that makes it easier to accept all the trials and tribulations of this year.”

Theirs has been a clash of styles almost from the start. Yet neither speaks with any perceivable bitterness about the relationship. They have found a way to get along despite their differences.

The joining of Williams and Brandenburg was a marriage of convenience. Brandenburg needed a point guard when he took over at SDSU last March, and Williams wanted a chance to play immediately.

He had averaged 14.5 points and 6.4 assists in his one season at Cerritos. He had played as a freshman at UC Irvine but, unhappy over his playing time, he did not return for his sophomore season. He sat out a year before enrolling at Cerritos.

All he wanted then was another chance at major college basketball. The clash of philosophies would come later.

“Early on in practice, he took a lot of information and did a lot of things real well,” Brandenburg said. “He made a tremendous amount of progress. He was not in the pressure of a game, and all he had to do at that point was to please me in practice. And he did a nice job of it.”

But once the Aztecs got into a game, Brandenburg said he noticed a change.

“All of a sudden, in his mind it was, ‘OK. Now I’m a scorer. This is the way I play.’ All of a sudden, another mind set switched on. I said, ‘Wait a minute, this isn’t the guy I coached from Oct. 15. This is another guy.’ ”

This was the Williams who would charge fearlessly to the basket, sometimes scoring, sometimes making a great pass but almost as frequently causing a turnover by dropping the ball into an unsuspecting teammate’s hands.

Such play also led to an early embarrassing spate of blocked shots. One in particular was captured in a newspaper photograph: a shot by the 5-foot 10-inch Williams about to be swatted away by a 7-foot member of the Soviet national team.

Brandenburg had the photo cut out and placed on Williams’ locker, where it still hangs as a reminder of his offensive limitations.

Yet despite such criticism, Williams has become the player Brandenburg has turned to when the Aztecs need a basket the most. In tied games at Hawaii and against Brigham Young, Brandenburg ran clear-out plays to allow Williams to drive to the basket.

Against Hawaii, Williams was fouled and made one of two free throws for a 59-58 victory. Against BYU, Williams’ eight-foot bank shot with four seconds left gave the Aztecs an 82-80 overtime victory.

“He is probably one of our better one-and-one players,” Brandenburg said. “As long as he doesn’t get too deep and run into one of those 6-10 guys, he is fine. If he drives to the hole, pulls up at about 6 to 8 feet, he is probably the best guy we’ve got.”

That is the role Williams enjoys but one he is not always called upon to perform. More often than not, his job is to get the ball in someone else’s hands so that he can score.

Frequently he does it well. Other times, he seems in his own world, making reckless passes that anger Brandenburg.

“I don’t think he tries to defy me as much as he has so many things on his mind,” Brandenburg said. “He just figures, ‘I’ve got to block some of this out and just go play my game.’ His anxiety level builds up. His frustration builds up. It can just kill us.”

Williams recognizes Brandenburg’s criticism and is trying his best to adjust his play while still maintaining a bit of his style. There is an undercurrent that whatever he does can’t be all bad or it wouldn’t have gotten him this far.

“Anytime you have a teaching coach and motivated player, there are going to be differences,” Williams said. “It’s hard for me to accept it when he tells me I can’t do this or I can’t do that when I think I can.

“But I don’t try to think of that as a conflict. Off the court, the coach is a down-to-earth guy. But on the court, there is always going to be a lot of tension between player and coach.”

Aztec Notes

San Diego State (11-15, 4-10 in conference) must win tonight against Colorado State (15-11, 6-8) and Saturday against Air Force (11-14, 4-10) to have a chance to gain the sixth seed for the Western Athletic Conference tournament starting Wednesday at Brigham Young. Colorado State then also would have to lose at Hawaii Saturday for the Aztecs to finish in a tie for sixth with the Rams. The Aztecs would gain the tiebreaker in the seeding because of their victory against top-seeded BYU. If the Aztecs lose to Colorado State, they can still earn the seventh seed by beating Air Force, regardless of the outcome of the Falcons’ game at Hawaii tonight. The Aztecs also would have the tiebreaker over Air Force.