Chevalier Embodies the Cavalier Attitude : Basketball: Having persevered through personal setbacks and inexperience, the point guard sets the pace for powerful Cleveland High.

Anticipation was driving an already squirrelly kid more nuts. Andre Chevalier wanted more than anything to show that although he was just a freshman, he could play basketball at Cleveland High.

Chevalier was pumped up and ready to roll. He figured it was his destiny to be a spoke in Cleveland’s wheel of fortune, if not the hub of considerable hubbub.

Patience, at age 14, is a rare commodity. Nonetheless, Chevalier would have to wait.

“All I kept hearing about Andre was how much he was looking forward to getting out there and running with us,” former Cleveland Coach Bob Braswell said. “He was all pumped up about going through conditioning.”

Chevalier’s admission to Cleveland was delayed a month because of school district paper work and he missed the team’s initial practices. Tardiness took its toll on the wide-eyed, soon to be slack-jawed freshman.

His first session of preseason conditioning, for instance, nearly wiped him out. Stage one, deflation. Stage two, blowout. Stage three, flat (on his back).

“He finally makes it out for his first day, and after about 30 seconds, I look over and he’s laying in the corner,” Braswell said. “He’s laying there on the floor with his head propped up against the wall.

“I sent an assistant over, and Andre says that he can’t make it, that he’s gonna throw up or something.”

Three years later, it is Chevalier who sets the pace from his point-guard position. Sure, there are still plenty of hanging tongues in the Cleveland gym, but they belong to guys chasing Chevalier.

“When I first got there, I tried to go as hard as I could and I almost killed myself,” said Chevalier, now a 5-10, 165-pound senior.

Chevalier breathes easier these days as a starter for Cleveland (20-5), which tonight at 7:30 will play host to longtime nemesis Fairfax in a second-round game of the City Section 4-A Division playoffs.

Three-plus seasons of breakneck Cleveland basketball, as well as dealing with a couple of personal setbacks, have honed Chevalier’s survival instincts. If his freshman season taught Chevalier patience, then the succeeding three have taught him perseverance.

And self-preservation.

Chevalier was but an eighth-grader in 1986 when the Cavaliers advanced to the 4-A Division final--the first of two consecutive trips to the championship game at the Sports Arena--but lost to Crenshaw. Perhaps a little in awe, Chevalier experienced the pangs of schoolboy insecurity.

Yet Chevalier’s reservations were of a personal, rather than an athletic, nature. A physical deformity was Chevalier’s primary reason for concern.

“Before he first came out, he called me on the phone,” recalled Braswell, now an assistant at Cal State Long Beach. “He said, ‘Do you know about my hand?’

“I said, ‘Yeah, I know.’

“He said, ‘Does it bother you?’

“I said, ‘No. Does it bother you? ‘ “

Chevalier was born without the two middle fingers of his left hand. Like any appearance-conscious adolescent, he was acutely aware of the characteristic. As a sophomore, Chevalier would habitually wrap the hand in his uniform jersey during timeouts and free throws, keeping it hidden.

“When we first met, I didn’t notice it,” senior forward Bobby McRae said. “If you see him play, you won’t notice it either, because he can definitely use both hands.”

Handicap? Not so you’d notice.

“He’s pretty much eliminated it as a problem, and that’s to his credit, because that’s a big handicap (for a guard),” senior guard Eddie Hill said.

As Chevalier grew more confident in his abilities, his insecurity waned. “I used to be paranoid about it,” he said. “But now, I don’t think anybody holds it against me for only having three fingers.”

Chevalier also has dealt with a severe vision problem. His right eye became infected as a child, he said, resulting in permanently blurred vision. Toward the end of his freshman season, the problem--of which Chevalier had long been aware--was detected by a school nurse. Chevalier’s mother was required to sign a liability waiver before the school district would allow Andre to continue playing. He wore protective goggles as a sophomore, but they limited his vision even more, he said.

“He doesn’t talk about it much, but he’s almost legally blind in that eye,” said Braswell, who admits to having a soft spot for Chevalier. “All this (physical) stuff is why my heart probably went out to him more. I don’t feel sympathy for him, I just like him more because of the way he handled it.”

There were other hurdles. After completing the sixth grade, Chevalier moved from Maryland to North Hollywood and enrolled at Madison Junior High. He lived in the Grant High attendance area, as did McRae. Yet both decided to attend Cleveland through its magnet program, a voluntary integration program of the L. A. Unified School District wherein students may enroll outside their attendance area to take advantage of another school’s curriculum. Cleveland’s specialty is humanities.

“We believe they were recruited by Cleveland personnel,” Grant Coach Howard Levine said this week. “Whether it was Braswell was not substantiated.”

Indeed, complaints by Levine resulted in a City Section investigation of the specifics surrounding the pair’s enrollment in the magnet program--as well as an examination of other recruiting allegations directed at Braswell--but the freshmen remained at Cleveland. Levine said the lure of playing in the area’s marquee program remains powerful.

“(Players) still see Cleveland as the oasis,” he said. “They still have stars in their eyes. But who knows, they might have made the right decision.”

The foul charged to Chevalier--who did everything but hold his nose--indeed smelled, a fact of which the quick-handed player was absolutely sure. Chevalier bolted away from the referee and ran a full circle around half of the court, hands on his head in a spirited plea of innocence.

As has become customary for Chevalier during what he perceives to be a clear case of official’s malfeasance, he let loose a wail that sounds like a cross between a lonely bull moose and the bull horn of a 16-wheeler.

It was followed by a more familiar sound, Tweeeet, as Chevalier drew a technical foul for showing up the ref.

“I don’t try to get technicals, but I’m the emotional type, I guess,” he said. At halftime, a sheepish Chevalier sought out the official, shook his hand and apologized.

It all contributes to Chevalier’s cartoonish quality. When he’s on defense, his arms are perpetually in motion, like a Palm Springs windmill. His hands continually slap at the opponent, pressing, probing, looking for the picture-perfect pick.

Although he averages 8.2 points and seven assists a game, defense is Chevalier’s calling card. Last season, when the Cavaliers won the 32-team Las Vegas Holiday tournament, it was the opponent who wailed.

“When he came in, our team played at a higher level,” Braswell said. “Everyone remarked on it.”

It was the remarkably one-dimensional harping of Braswell that made Chevalier a believer in defense. Braswell said Chevalier “wasn’t a particularly good defensive player” when the latter joined the program. But Chevalier soon became a defensive disciple.

“Braz would always be saying, ‘If you play defense, you’ll play for me,’ ” Chevalier said. “He’d use that as a motivator. I tried to do my best, try hard, and watch (former Cavaliers) Andre Anderson and Damon Greer while they were here.

“They used to be so good. It looked like they were having fun when they played D. Besides, it was an easy way to get points. Just get that quick steal . . . “

It didn’t sink in immediately. After Chevalier’s junior varsity team slogged its way through a particularly poor first half, Chevalier, et al., got a double-barreled blast of the Braz razz.

Eyebrows raised, the freshman with the funny French name quickly realized that there had better be serious improvement in the team’s esprit de corps .

“When I was in ninth grade, we played San Fernando and they were blowing us out in the first half,” Chevalier said. “We weren’t playing any defense. Braz is yelling, ‘If y’all don’t go out and play some D this half, I’m kicking the whole JV team off. We won’t even have a JV team.’ ”

Yep, Braswell was talking D--as in Death Sentence. Braswell’s estimation of Chevalier’s performance? More like esprit de corpse.

“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this man is crazy,’ ” Chevalier said. “After that, starting in the second half, I began playing D the best I could.”

Chevalier’s development was accelerated by playing alongside former Cavalier teammates Adonis Jordan, Michael Gray, Tim Bowen and Greer. All four were offered Division I scholarships. Then again, Chevalier played behind all these guys his first two seasons on the varsity, too.

Such is life at talent-rich Cleveland. At least Chevalier got to practice against some of the area’s best. Plus, he had great seats.

“It helped me and it hurt me,” said Chevalier, a three-year letterman. “Sitting out most of the time did bring my confidence down a little--I just wasn’t playing. But it helped me a lot, too.”

Of course, Chevalier isn’t the only guard who decided that the fast-breakin’, no-prisoner-takin’ Cleveland style is what it’s all about. When Chevalier was a sophomore, Jordan--now a freshman at Kansas--moved to the Valley from New York and was referred to Cleveland by a friend of the family. A year later, Hill transferred to Cleveland from Burroughs High in Burbank.

Like a bad bounce pass, Chevalier never seemed to get where he most wanted to be. This may be a strange way for a point guard to look at things, but there simply wasn’t enough turnover in the guard department.

“It seemed like every time it was my turn to step up,” Chevalier said, “somebody else stepped in.”

Conversely, Chevalier’s shoes, once he cracked the starting five as a senior, were equally hard for Hill to step into. Chevalier was academically ineligible for the first five games of the season, and while he sat on the sideline awaiting a verdict on an academic appeal, Hill started at point guard. Cleveland sputtered to a 2-3 start.

“We missed his leadership and defensive intensity,” Hill said.

Chevalier and defense, then, have become synonymous. Heck, he even made his varsity debut without the ball. He was called up from the junior varsity for the 1987 playoffs and played in Cleveland’s 4-A Division title game, an 86-58 loss to Fairfax. Chevalier and McRae, in fact, are the lone remaining Cavs to have participated in a City final. However briefly.

“We got in for three seconds,” McRae said.

Cleveland’s stay in the playoffs the past two seasons has probably seemed as brief. Despite entering the playoffs as The Times’ No. 1-ranked Valley team each of the past two seasons, Cleveland has not advanced beyond the second round. Last season, Fairfax knocked out the Cavaliers in the second round, 53-51. In 1988, Fremont upset Cleveland in the first round, 69-64.

Yet playing in the Crenshaw debacle did nothing to diminish Chevalier’s appetite for another final.

“Every year we talk about it,” he said. “But the last two years, it hasn’t been working for us.”

You can bet that Chevalier has been putting in overtime. He has become the consummate Cavalier, a team- and defense-oriented player.

Even the name (most people mistakenly pronounce it Shav-uh-LEER, he prefers the traditional French pronunciation of Shuh-VAHL-yea) hinted that Cleveland was his destiny.

“My grandfather was French, but other than that, I don’t know where the name came from,” he said, flashing a smile. “But in English, it’s pronounced just like Cavalier. I guess that’s a coincidence, I don’t know.”

Au contraire.