. . . Wyoming’s Biggest Cowboy in the Bunkhouse

The snow came down hard--48 hours non-stop--during Eric Leckner’s basketball recruiting visit to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.

Leckner’s guide during that trip four years ago was forward Tim Hunt, a Colorado boy, who was apologetic about the blizzard.

After all, Leckner was a Manhattan Beach boy who loved surfing until he discovered basketball at Mira Costa High School and mastered a turnaround jump shot.

He could have hopped on the next recruiting train to sun-soaked UC Irvine, and when the snowstorms swept across the plains to bury Laramie, he would be basking in the sunshine of Newport Beach.

Instead, Leckner decided on Wyoming.

When he arrived, he was a 6-9, 205-pounder. Now the senior center is the biggest Cowboy in the bunkhouse at a strapping 6-11, 270. And after four years--with a trip to the NCAA Tournament round of 16 and a Sports Illustrated appearance--he’s sure he made the right choice.

This year he’s averaging 14.6 points per game, second best at Wyoming. And he led the 14th-ranked Cowboys to their second straight berth in the NCAA tourney over the weekend as Wyoming won the Western Athletic Conference tournament in Provo, Utah, and set up a date with Loyola today in a first-round West Regional game in Salt Lake City.

Leckner, who grew up a long three-point shot away from Loyola, was named the tournament’s most valuable player and his dramatic 19-foot jump shot at the buzzer gave the Cowboys a come-from-behind win over Colorado State last Friday.

Despite the brutal winters, Leckner has no misgivings about his choice of Wyoming.

“This is the ideal situation at Wyoming,” Leckner said. “Sure it snows, and sure it’s cold, but we’ve got the best facilities and fans in the world. So I just go out and have a good time.”

A good time . That, apparently, is the essence of basketball at Wyoming. With a cast of characters as colorful and flamboyant as any in fiction, the Cowboys became the preseason darlings of the nation’s media after they shocked Virginia and UCLA in last year’s NCAA tournament.

Mercurial forward Fennis Dembo, Wyoming’s leading scorer, has gotten most of the time in the spotlight with his streak scoring and fist-pumping, high-fiving, fast-talking court banter.

But it’s also a team that has a point guard, Sean Dent, who wants to play with a toothpick in his mouth and a shooting guard, Twalure (Turk) Boyd, who wants to be a soul singer.

“I’ve got eight different personalities going eight different directions,” said Wyoming’s relaxed, drawling Coach Benny Dees, in his first year.

Dees’ predecessor, Jim Brandenburg, framed a methodical half-court offense around the soft-shooting Leckner. This year Dees has installed a free-lance, fast-breaking attack that better suits the scoring skills of Dembo (20.7 points per game) than those of Leckner. That’s one reason Leckner’s scoring average is down from the 18.6 he averaged during his junior season.

Another reason is the emergence of a brace of fine shooting guards, Reggie Fox and Robyn Davis.

“There’s only so much basketball to go around,” Leckner said. “I’m still taking good shots.”

This year, however, he’s not taking as many.

In Dees’ wide-open offense, Leckner is averaging only eight shots per game (compared to 11 last year). But when he gets them off, they generally go in. His 64% shooting marks him among the most accurate in the nation. And his feathery hooks and fall-away jumpers inside the paint are nearly unblockable.

“My turnaround shot still hasn’t been swatted,” Leckner said. “I guess when somebody slaps one of them into the stands I’ll change my perspective.”

Leckner’s eye-opening scoring percentage is one reason Dees would like to get the ball inside to his center more often. So it’s no surprise that Dent tries to dish off to him when Wyoming settles into its half-court offense.

Dees has a potent one-two punch with Leckner and Dembo, who are roommates. Both are terrific rebounders. And they give Wyoming the perfect blend of inside and outside artillery.

Opponents can’t concentrate on one and ignore the other. That’s what burned Virginia and UCLA in last year’s NCAA tourney. Virginia was so intent on stopping Dembo that Leckner poured in 22 points. UCLA keyed on Leckner, so Dembo blitzed the Bruins with a rainstorm of three-pointers and finished with 41.

“If it wasn’t for Eric, we wouldn’t be where we are now,” said Dembo, who is as good a talker as shooter. “In that game, they were slacking off of me and onto Eric. I had the open ‘J’ all night long, and that’ll beat all.

“It’s nice to know you’ve got that big fellow in the middle. When a guy like that’s going to give you 20 or 30 points a night, you can just go out there and play really comfortable. You don’t have to go out and club people over the head, man.”

There’s a chemistry between Leckner and Dembo that is likely to land both in the NBA. Both are considered by scouts and coaches as potential first- or second-round draft picks.

“Eric’s got the size to play in the NBA,” said Brandenburg, who is now doing his coaching at San Diego State. “He can catch the ball in traffic with people leaning on him. Plus his maturity and his growth are still ahead of him.”

Dees thinks the free-lance style of Wyoming will boost Leckner’s stock in the NBA. Dees said learning to run in a fast transition game will familiarize Leckner with the professional style. Jim Nielsen, Leckner’s coach at Mira Costa and now coach at North Torrance High, agrees.

“Eric can move just as well as (the Clippers’) Benoit Benjamin, plus he can shoot better,” Nielsen said. “He can play with Alton Lister (of the Seattle SuperSonics) and he’s a better athlete than (Dallas Mavericks center) James Donaldson. Plus he takes up a lot of space.”

It wasn’t always that way, however. At the start of his freshman season at Wyoming, before Brandenburg started him on a program of food supplements and weight training, Leckner was easy to push around in the middle.

“He was weak, man,” said the muscular Dembo.

“He was gawky, round-shouldered and sunken at the chest,” Brandenburg said. “He looked like a cannonball had caught him in the chest.”

In his freshman season, Leckner added 50 pounds and refined his moves in the low post and averaged 8.4 points per game. In his sophomore season, people began to take notice of Wyoming when Leckner and Dembo led the Cowboys to the National Invitational Tournament. Brandenburg compared Leckner’s development at that point to “a larva turning into a butterfly.”

If Leckner was still a larva at Mira Costa, then Nielsen thinks he had one of the best larvae in the state in 1984.

“It’s a shame he wasn’t voted the MVP of the Ocean League,” Nielsen said. “By halfway through his senior year, I felt Eric was the dominant player in Southern California.”

Leckner wasn’t a starter his junior year on the junior varsity. But the next year, after a lot of one-on-one work with Nielsen and his assistant, Rick Sabosky (now head coach at El Segundo High), Leckner was scoring consistently in the 18-to-20-point range.

And suddenly, the former beach rat who had wanted to do nothing but surf was trading in his wet suit for a basketball.

“When he came into the program, he already had the skills,” Nielsen said. “He had huge hands and a soft touch. He didn’t have the right mentality, though. He was always kind of a surfer type--really laid-back.”

Leckner said he hasn’t been to the beach in four years.

“Those days are gone,” he said. “I’ve got new goals and new things to do. There’s a lot of opportunities here. I’ll always have a chance to go back.”

If he’s lucky, Leckner will have a chance to get back to the round of sixteen in the NCAA tournament. And he’ll have fun doing it.

“It’s obvious that I’m having a good time,” Leckner said. “I’m playing with a bunch of guys who are enthusiastic on the court and are playing at the level they want to play. Very rarely does it ever get out of hand.”

And does Leckner’s mother, Mary Ann Halligan, a Manhattan Beach realtor, mind her son rooming with Dembo, a player who has had a reputation in the WAC as the most hated and most out-of-hand man on the road?

“Fennis is a very sweet and shy young man,” Halligan said, before she boarded a plane for Provo to watch her son play in the WAC tourney. “He’s very gracious. Eric and Fennis are like brothers. In fact, the whole team are sweethearts. And now that it’s almost over, they’re getting nostalgic and really trying to have fun.”

And what does Dembo think of his roommate?

“He’s real cool, man.”