He Puts His Nose to the Grindstone : College basketball: USC’s Harold Miner works his way to becoming leading freshman player in the Pac-10.

Nicknamed Baby Jordan, USC freshman guard Harold Miner went one-on-one against Michael Jordan four years ago.

Miner was selected for this honor because he was the best player in a basketball camp. They played to five baskets, winner’s outs, and Jordan let Miner have the ball to start the game. After taking a 4-0 lead, Miner became delirious.

“I thought I would win the game easily,” he said.

Think again.

As Miner went up for what could have been the game-winning jumper, Jordan blocked the shot and dunked on him. Miner didn’t get the ball again as Jordan scored five consecutive baskets.

“He looked at me and he went up and caught my shot and dunked it,” Miner said. “There was nothing I could do after that.”

Said Miner’s mother, Marilyn: “It was like Michael woke up and said, ‘I can’t let this kid beat me.”’

A 6-foot-5, 185-pound guard from Inglewood High, Miner dreamed of attending North Carolina, Jordan’s alma mater.

“I always wanted to go to North Carolina because I felt Dean Smith would help me become the best player I could be,” Miner said. “But the assistant coach that was recruiting me (Roy Williams) got the head coaching job at Kansas, and Dean Smith stopped recruiting me because he thought I would go to Kansas.”

Miner decided not to attend Kansas after the Jayhawks were placed on NCAA probation.

After considering UCLA, DePaul, Southern Methodist, Notre Dame and Pitt, Miner signed with USC because he liked Trojan Coach George Raveling.

“I felt Coach Raveling really cared about me as a person,” Miner said. “I felt he could help me become a great player. I felt he was sincere about what he was saying.”

Raveling said he didn’t expect Miner to attend USC.

“Harold is probably one of the hardest guys I’ve ever had to recruit,” Raveling said. “For the longest time I couldn’t get him to visit the campus. There was no question he was going to North Carolina. If North Carolina had offered him a scholarship, there would never have been a recruiting tour.”

But Raveling’s persistence paid off.

“When I was working for Lefty Driesell at Maryland, I learned that persistence is very important. If you hang in there, you end up getting a lot of kids.”

Although Raveling saw Miner play only four times in high school, the coach knew he had talent. “You don’t have to go to a car dealership 10 times to spot a Mercedes,” Raveling said.

Miner has been the Mercedes of freshmen in the Pacific 10 this season.

After signing Miner, Raveling criticized his offensive and defensive fundamentals in the first week of practice. “The first week he spent most of the time listening to me telling him how bad a player he was,” Raveling said.

Why did Raveling criticize Miner so intensely?

“For a hundred different reasons, some of them psychological and some because it was the truth,” Raveling said. “You’ve got to create an atmosphere where they understand that there’s still a lot of learning to do, because they’ve just been through six months or a year of everyone telling them they’re the greatest thing since the Baby Ruth candy bar.

“You’ve got to bring them down to earth and make them understand that if they’re going to be successful at this level there are certain fundamental things they’ve got to master.”

Miner seems to have mastered college basketball in only 16 games.

After averaging 12.5 points in his first six games, Miner has averaged 22.4 in his last nine.

“He’s got explosive potential,” said sportscaster Dick Vitale, a former college and pro coach. “I think he’s one of the top freshmen in the country. When he’s done, he’ll be a blue-chipper.”

Averaging 19.1 points a game this season, Miner is the highest-scoring freshman in the Pac-10. He matched his season high by scoring 37 points in the Trojans’ 92-82 loss to Oregon State last week, falling two points shy of the school single-game record for freshmen, set by Cliff Robinson in 1978.

Miner is on a pace to break the school record of 475 points by a freshman, set by Tom Lewis in 1986.

A prolific outside shooter, Miner has developed inside scoring moves too. His teammates still talk about the time he went up for a jumper, switched the ball from his left to his right hand in the air and made the shot.

And after studying Julius Erving and Jordan, Miner has become a master dunker, having perfected the 360-degree cup dunk. Miner goes up and does a complete spin. Then, cupping the ball in his left hand, he swings around like a windmill and dunks the ball over a defender.

Miner wears the same number as his idol, 23, and has also adopted some of Jordan’s mannerisms. “If you watch him run, he runs like Michael Jordan,” Marilyn Miner said. “But he still wants to be known for being Harold.”

Like Jordan, Miner sticks out his tongue when he shoots.

“It’s not because I’m trying to copy Jordan,” Miner said. “It’s not something that I’m conscious of when I’m doing it.”

THE ECCENTRIC

Miner listened intently as Brian Hammel, a Trojan assistant, diagrammed a play in a scrimmage. Miner kept moving closer to Hammel until Miner’s nose was touching Hammel’s sports jacket.

Hammel was stunned. But Miner’s longtime friends weren’t.

Miner likes to feel objects with his nose. He has touched the arms of his teammates with his nose, and he also likes to feel the ball with his nose. He startled his teammates by rubbing his nose against the seat next to him on an airplane.

“I’m not smelling,” Miner said. “I just like to touch things with my nose. I don’t know why. There might be something wrong with me, man. I don’t know.”

Miner’s teammates thought he was crazy.

“Everyone has idiosyncrasies,” said USC center Chris Munk, who rooms with Miner on the road. “Harold just has more than other people.”

Indeed.

Miner amuses himself by holding his hand close to his ear and rubbing his thumb and forefinger together.

Why does he do it?

“Because I like the sound it makes,” Miner said.

And during practices and games, he uses his fingers to feel cracks on the floor. Why?

“I don’t know,” Miner said. “It’s just a habit. I’ve always done it at the park where I started playing basketball. Now sometimes when I go back to the park, I see little kids touching the court.”

Most of the other USC starters receive high-five handshakes when they take the floor. But when Miner runs onto the floor for pregame introductions, his teammates touch the floor with their index fingers.

“I used to tell Harold that sometimes he’s just a little too eccentric,” Marilyn Miner said. “He’s just a little too weird.”

Miner also has rituals that he follows during games.

Before shooting free throws, he bounces the ball three times and then rubs it gently. “During games the ball gets wet, and I’m just trying to dry it off,” Miner said.

Miner also likes to eat.

During a late-afternoon interview in a hotel coffee shop, Miner had a salad and two pieces of cheesecake with a New York steak. He washed down the meal with several soft drinks, before excusing himself to attend a team dinner.

His eating habits are legendary at Inglewood High.

Once, a baseball coach took Miner to dinner because he wanted him to come out for the sport.

“He almost cleaned the restaurant out,” Marilyn Miner said. “And the coach told him not to come out for baseball because he might be tempted to take him out to dinner again. At Inglewood, people would say to Harold, ‘We’ll talk and we’ll play basketball, but we won’t go out to eat.’ ”

THE GOLDEN CHILD

Miner slept with a basketball as a child, and he’d dribble one while running errands.

A basketball junkie, he played indoors on rainy days against his younger brother, Joe, now 15. They’d form a hoop out of a wire hanger and attach it to a door to set up a basket. They’d ball up socks to use as a basketball.

“I’d always tell him to foul me and push me around as hard as he could, to prepare me for real games,” Miner said. “He’d knock me to the floor, and I’d still make the shots.”

Miner worked on his game at Rogers Park in Inglewood, where he’d play eight hours a day in the summer.

“There’s no question that he’s a legend there,” Raveling said of Miner. “You wouldn’t believe the respect he commands on the playground.”

After moving from the playground to Crozier Junior High in Inglewood, Miner attracted the attention of several high schools.

“Manual Arts, Westchester, Crenshaw and Morningside all tried to get me,” he said. “They all guaranteed I’d be a star there. Some schools offered me free shoes. But I decided to stay home.”

Miner averaged 29.5 points, 10.5 rebounds and four assists in leading Ingelwood to the quarterfinals of the Southern Section 4-A playoffs last season.

When Miner finally decided to attend USC, it came as a relief to his mother, who had been pestered by phone calls, telegrams and letters from collegiate coaches.

“I never want to go through that again,” she said. “It was ridiculous. I would sit and look at Harold like, ‘Well, what are you, gold or what?’ ”

Although Miner grew up in a section of Inglewood plagued by gang violence and heavy drug sales, the gangs didn’t try to recruit him because they knew he was a basketball player.

But Miner had to share the park with gang members, who hung out there.

Once, he took a water break while shooting baskets and found that his ball had been stolen.

“He didn’t know if the gang members that were there had taken it or somebody else had,” Marilyn Miner said. “There was nothing he could do because he was by himself. He was just sitting there telling the gang members what had happened. They left, and within five minutes they had returned with a leather ball.

“They gave it to Harold and they told him, ‘Man, you should always have a ball.’ And they sat there and watched while he just played with the leather ball. He came home, and I didn’t even want to think about where they got that leather ball. I don’t believe they went and bought it.”