Mighty Lions--Changing an Attitude

This is the silver anniversary of a golden moment in sports. It was a quarter of a century ago that a lovable little school called Loyola, from America’s second-largest city, saw the college basketball world sitting there like a loose ball, seized it, squeezed it, dribbled it, spun it on its finger and stuffed it in a trophy case, by somehow managing to win the national championship.

Don’t look now, but lightning is back in the sky. Look sharp, because here comes Loyola again. Another Loyola. Still from the country’s second-largest city, but that city is Los Angeles now, not Chicago, and these are not George Ireland’s Loyola Ramblers we are talking about, but Paul Westhead’s Loyola Marymount Lions, the rip-roaringest, high-scoringest, hottest little basketball team you ever did see.

OK, so maybe you haven’t seen it. Loyola Marymount finally got on ESPN Monday night, for the very first time, and ESPN is the sort of network that already has televised ballgames involving every school from Philadelphia Textile to Mel’s College of Motel Management.

Did the Lions put on a show for their cable audience? Yes, they did. They won their 24th straight game--extending the nation’s longest winning streak. They scored 104 points--yawn, only 6 1/2 short of their average. And, they beat Santa Clara, at Santa Clara, to win the West Coast Athletic Conference tournament--confirming their reservation in the national tournament, just in case any wise guys out there on the National Collegiate Athletic Assn.’s selection committee had any thoughts about snubbing the Lions when the tournament bids are announced this Sunday.

For those not yet familiar with this razzling, dazzling, sizzling, 27-3 basketball team, permit us to make some introductions.

First, the coach. He is the handsome Mr. Westhead, Professor Paul, best known for his Shakespearean sonnets and for being the only man alive ever to have made Magic Johnson frown.

Westhead has much in common with a certain Pat Riley. Both have been assistant and head coach of the Lakers. Both currently coach the flashiest basketball teams in America. And both are extremely popular at off-season clinics, where coaches and players come not only to consult them on basketball matters but on tailoring and hair-grooming matters.

The Lions and Lakers even practice in the same gym, on Loyola’s campus, made famous many years ago as the place Spencer Haywood napped during calisthenics.

Finally, the big questions:

How far can Loyola go?

All the way?

“I think we can,” Mike Yoest said Tuesday, after returning home from the WCAC tournament. “We’ll have to have some breaks, but everybody does. I sure don’t see any team out there that can absolutely destroy us.”

If anybody is representative of what Loyola Marymount is all about, it is Mike (It’s More Than Skill, It’s An Attitude) Yoest. He has been there through thick and thin, unlike, say, Bo Kimble and Hank Gathers, who have only been there through thick. Kimble, in fact, is undefeated in his Loyola career--he missed the road games at St. John’s, Oregon State and Cal State Long Beach, the only games the Lions lost.

Yoest knows the other side of it. For three seasons, he played in relative obscurity, diving into the seats for a loose ball and landing in the laps of nobody. Today, the gyms are jammed, and students are sitting at courtside in T-shirts that say “Mike Yoest Fan Club” and “It’s More Than Skill, It’s An Attitude,” which pretty much describes his play. In fact, this might as well be the team motto.

The first thing Yoest remembers about that first season was walking into practice and bumping into Lakers. There was James Worthy, his favorite, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic, his idols, and Yoest would sit on the sidelines and watch their workout. Now and then, the pros and college guys would get a pickup game organized, and that would be both an education and a thrill.

By his junior year, Yoest was outscoring any other player from his conference, but Loyola Marymount was no closer to the nation’s top 20 than Loyola of Chicago was. Company was coming, though, for his senior year, in the persons of Kimble and Gathers, transfers from USC, and Corey Gaines, previously of UCLA. The Lions finally had some teeth. Yoest doubted they could become kings of the jungle, but figured they could at least make some noise.

“Then we started out 3-3, and I remember thinking after the Long Beach game, ‘OK, we’re a .500 team. Maybe we can still get hot and win 20 games and at least get an at-large bid to the tournament,” Yoest said.

“Who’s to know we’re going to run off 24 wins in a row, and crack the nation’s top 20? Man, this year’s gone way beyond our wildest expectations.”

That goes for the whole campus. The Loyola baseball team is ranked seventh in the nation, and the men’s volleyball squad has made the top 20. Little Loyola suddenly has become a sports superpower. Next thing you know, Barry Switzer will be hired to launch a football program.

Barry Zepel, the school’s sports information director, has been Loyola loyal for nine years, through thick and extremely thin, and remembers when a game was the coldest ticket in town. Now, Loyola basketball is bigger in Los Angeles than USC and even U Know What, over in Westwood.

Even though the conference tournament was sold out, a guy called Loyola’s ticket office. He said his son absolutely needed to be admitted to the game, because he needed to see his doctor--and his doctor was going to be at the game.

“And the doctor was a urologist,” Zepel said. “I’m not sure, but I think I’ve heard it all now.”

Loyola is a hot ticket. Even ESPN has finally discovered West Coast basketball.

“We’re finally getting some of that East Coast respect,” Yoest said. “It took until we were 18-3 or 19-3 for some people to say, ‘Hey, these guys might be for real.’

“A lot of people have been putting down West Coast ball, but we’re slowly working our way back. I was beginning to think you had to be from the Big East or the ACC to be considered a good college basketball team. Hey, we know we can play with those guys.”

It’s more than skill, it’s . . .

You know.