COLLEGE BASKETBALL ‘88-89. : A NEW ERA : Asbury Promises There Will Be Some Bigger Waves This Season at Pepperdine

If teams are a reflection of their coaches, Jim Harrick’s Pepperdine basketball teams often looked like three guards in a 3-panel mirror. It was a good fit.

Tom Asbury, Harrick’s successor with the Waves, apparently will replace that image. His will present three forwards, a system he became familiar with when he played in the front court for the University of Wyoming.

A proper outfit for a rangy former Cowboy.

Harrick, named UCLA’s coach last April, played in the back court for Morris Harvey College in West Virginia, and in his 9 years at Pepperdine, he often went to a running attack paced by three guards.

That kind of lineup helped bring him 5 West Coast Athletic Conference championships and 6 postseason tournament appearances. But it also left most of the rebounding to one or two big men, one of whom was Levy Middlebrooks, the 1987-88 WCAC player of the year and Pepperdine’s career rebounding leader.

Last season, Middlebrooks, who is playing professionally in Spain, averaged 10.7 rebounds a game--leading the WCAC. In a game against Loyola Marymount, he had 25 rebounds and 42 points.

Asbury, who was Harrick’s top assistant, doesn’t appear to have a single big man to replace the muscular forward. But he may have three or four. Asbury has redesigned the offense to put more big men in the lineup.

“We have some size and bulk and may have to play two big guys at the same time for rebounding,” he said. “But we have to put the big guys in the right place.”

The right place will be the low post, rather than the high post offense, and it will sometimes be two places, a double low post.

The men up front will include 6-11 senior center Casey Crawford, a returning starter; 6-7 junior forward Dexter Howard, the team’s sixth man last season; 6-8 freshman forward Geoff Lear, an All-Southern Section 5-A selection from La Puente Bishop Amat High School, and 6-8 David Hairston, a junior college transfer from Chabot College in Hayward.

Asbury said: “When guys like Crawford play the high post, they have difficulty being a force offensively because all they are are catchers and passers.

“We need to get our big guys closer to the basket to do the things they are physically more capable of doing. Most big men have difficulty scoring from 15 or 16 feet, and (in a low-post offense) they should also increase their rebounding because they’ll be closer.”

That doesn’t mean that the Waves will always operate from a half-court offense and constantly attempt to pass the ball inside so that forwards and centers can take high-percentage shots, he said.

“We’re still going to run the fast break because we’ve got the athletes and shooters to do it. We need balance inside and outside.”

The shooters include 6-7 junior all-conference forward Tom Lewis, the transfer from USC who can drive to the basket or shoot from outside and averaged 23 points a game to top the Waves last season; 6-4 junior guard Craig Davis, a fine shooter from 3-point range, and 6-1 junior guard Shann Ferch, who sat out last season after he transferred from Montana State.

The team’s best athlete may be 6-3 senior point guard Marty Wilson, but he missed the last 3 months of last season after knee surgery.

“This may be one of the deepest teams we’ve in the last 10 years,” he said. “We can put a lot of different lineups on the floor. There’s not a guy in our program that I’m afraid to play.

“On the flip side, there’s not a guy that I’m afraid to sit down.”