Missing Link : Addition of Point Guard Damon Greer Could Make The Master’s an NAIA Force

Mel Hankinson, his face contorted and his brow beaded with perspiration, threw out his hands, looked right, looked left and, for an instant, glanced skyward.

Three-point shots were raining down but they weren’t falling the way of The Master’s College. Guard Brian Thornburg of Point Loma College was dialing long distance and his prayers were being answered.

Hankinson, basketball coach at Master’s, might have been calling for divine intervention as Thornburg’s bombs shredded what had been a comfortable lead.

Soon, he need only summon Damon Greer.

Yes, that Damon Greer; the 6-foot floor leader of three Cleveland High teams that won Valley 4-A League championships; the one who played so brilliantly as a high school sophomore that he overshadowed a senior teammate, UCLA-bound Trevor Wilson, during the City Section playoffs.

Greer has spent his second college basketball season in street clothes sitting near the end of the Master’s bench, longing to play. But Tuesday, that will change. One day and eleven months after quitting at Division I San Jose State, Greer will become eligible at Master’s, which plays in the National Assn. of Intercollegiate Athletics.

There are many Mustang faithful who can hardly wait. “What happened tonight won’t happen again,” Hankinson said last week after Master’s held on for a one-point win over Point Loma.

“Next time, we’ll put Damon on him.”

With Greer at point guard, Master’s (7-5) is expected to rise from the middle of the NAIA District 3 standings to challenge Westmont and Biola, the perennial powers of the conference.

Hankinson contends that Greer does not have to be a savior. “We don’t need Damon to do it all. He doesn’t have to score 25 points a game,” Hankinson says.

Yet, after Master’s dropped a four-point decision to Westmont earlier this month, Hankinson was quick to predict, “Damon would have been good for five points tonight.”

Greer, who is known for slick ball-handling and in-your-face defense, would appear to be a thoroughbred in a stable of plow horses. However, that is not to say that Greer is a misfit at Master’s, a Christian school of 850 students secluded in the foothills of Newhall. Greer attended Christian schools before enrolling at Cleveland.

Greer says he may miss the big crowds and glamour of Division I, but no more than he will welcome a small-college atmosphere. “I’m just glad to be back on the court and with people who care about me as an individual and not just an athlete,” he says.

Such apparently was not the case at San Jose State, where on Jan. 18 Greer and nine teammates walked out on Coach Bill Berry, accusing him of “verbal abuse” and “mental cruelty.”

“(Berry) had a lot for the game as far as what he knew,” Greer says, “but the way he taught it . . . we didn’t see eye to eye on that. He stepped over the line of his authority.”

Even if most of the team had not quit, the soft-spoken Greer says his freshman season would have been his last at San Jose. “I just wasn’t happy there,” says Greer, who played in 11 games and was one of only two true freshmen on the team. “I started looking around long before that happened.”

Hankinson contacted Greer after hearing through a mutual friend--while getting his hair cut, no less--that Greer was interested in going to school close to his family’s Lake View Terrace home.

“It’s like I tell our assistant coaches, ‘Always have recruiting on your mind . . . even when you’re getting your hair cut,’ ” Hankinson says.

Hankinson flew to San Jose in March to meet with Greer over lunch, but it wasn’t until mid-August that Greer decided to join the Mustangs. Hankinson’s response: “Around here we shout ‘Amen!’ ”

Master’s was 15-15 last season but its top two players--Tom Bruner and Jason Webster--were freshmen. Greer, who will make his debut in a reserve role Tuesday against Cal Baptist, will soon join a lineup of three sophomores and a junior. “We knew our other four positions were solid, but the fifth and most important part of the puzzle was missing--the point guard,” Hankinson says. “With Damon as our fifth player, we’re competitive with any college-division team in this area.”

And he figures it’s only a matter of time before Master’s takes its place among the NAIA elite.

Says Hankinson: “Right now we know if we stay healthy that when it comes February we’ll be playing to go to Kansas City,” site of the NAIA national tournament.