USIU MEN’S PREVIEW : Winning is No. 1 on Gulls’ Agenda

U.S. International University has its deepest team ever. Its most talented team. Its best player. That’s the way Gulls’ Coach Gary Zarecky sums it up.

But will USIU have its most-successful team? Draw its biggest crowds? It has to.

This may be the most important season for USIU basketball since it hired Zarecky from Sweetwater High School five years ago.

USIU has made no secret that it is looking to basketball to be a lighthouse for the institution, to guide the unknowing to the steps of the admissions office, hoping that when someone says USIWho, they say it with the hardness directed toward a hated rival and not with sincere puzzlement.

With programs such as women’s basketball and hockey gone, and others cut to bare-bones level, men’s basketball will have to carry the load if Division I athletics is to survive at USIU.

“Obviously, we have to win, for several reasons,” Zarecky said. “One is because I’m tired of losing. We’re making progress, but to me it’s not good enough. I’m not here to build internally. I want to win. I want this program to be successful from the respect point of view. We don’t even get that in our own back yard.”

This is the Gulls’ best chance to win. USIU is playing 17 of its 28 games at home, a reversal of its usual schedule. Five starters return from last year’s team, the school’s most talented. And Zarecky thinks he has brought in one of the best players on the West Coast--Kevin Bradshaw.

After going 8-10 his first year, Zarecky was 11-17 in 1986-87, 10-18 two years ago and 11-17 last year.

FORWARDS

Demetrius Laffitte (6-foot-6) was the only player to shoot better than 50% from the floor (210-379) last season and led the team in scoring (18.5) and rebounding (10.4); he was a preseason independent school All-American according to Street & Smith. But Gary Williams will have to rebound from a sub-par shooting year to provide some balance. Williams shot just 38% from the field last year while averaging 17.5 points.

Mitch Brown (6-6), a transfer from Yavapai Community College, and Greg Howard, who played in 28 games for the Gulls last year, will give USIU some depth.

CENTERS

“The whole key to our season is Mike Sterner,” Zarecky said. “To be successful at the Division I level depends on what your big man can do.”

Sterner (6-11) has started since his freshman year and has 56 games of experience as he enters his junior year. Last year he averaged 6.3 points and 6.3 rebounds and shot 36% from the field (76-212) and a dismal 35% from the line (25-72).

Pushing Sterner will be 6-11 freshman Steve McCaughey from Capistrano Valley High.

GUARDS

Bradshaw (6-6) played two years at Bethune-Cookman, where he averaged 19 points and 5.4 rebounds as a sophomore, then joined the Navy for four years. Last year, he was on the All-Armed Forces team with David Robinson.

Steve Smith (6-3) returns for his fourth year at the point. Smith averaged 11.5 points last year but shot just 35%. Bradshaw will replace senior Paul Wilson, who has been suffering from back problems. Wilson averaged 17.8 points per game, second highest on the team, last year as a starter.