NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : These Wipeouts Fine With Loyola’s Fryer : West Regional: Hot-shooting guard predicts victory over Alabama in Sweet 16.

For beach boy Jeff Fryer, it’s easy to sum up Loyola’s performance in the NCAA basketball tournament: “It’s like riding the ultimate wave.”

Fryer, who gave up the waves at Newport Beach for the hardwood, hung 41 on Michigan in Sunday’s 149-115 victory, and he’s averaging 32 points a game in the tournament.

As has so often been the case for Fryer as the designated shooter at Loyola Marymount, his tournament performance has been overshadowed, this time by the 41-point average of Bo Kimble through the first two rounds.

But Fryer’s long-range artillery show Sunday, which included a tournament-record 11 three-point baskets and 15-of-20 accuracy, has made him a media star this week and underscored what has been known around Loyola for years: If Fryer is hot, Loyola is difficult to beat.

And Fryer has been hot.

“I get a feeling sometimes that I can’t miss, and I’ve been getting that feeling during games a lot lately,” he said this week. “When I feel like that, I’m going to shoot it no matter where I am, wherever I catch it, even if I’m 28 or 30 feet from the basket.”

Coach Paul Westhead calls Fryer “an uncanny shooter,” adding: “When he’s really into the game, he just catches the ball and shoots. I don’t think he even looks.”

In fact, Fryer’s signature shot from the right corner is the first option of Westhead’s offense. He may be the only coach in the country who screams at his players for passing up the open 25-footer.

“Coach Westhead gets mad at me when I don’t shoot,” Fryer said.

Fryer, often referred to by Westhead as “a hired gun,” will be slinging three-point shots at 5:25 p.m. Friday, when the Lions meet Alabama in the third round of the NCAA tournament at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. Alabama, which allows only 61 points a game, will try to slow down the Loyola offense that is scoring more than 125 points a game.

“My feeling is we’re going to blow Alabama right off the court, like we did Michigan,” Fryer said. “We’ll have the same (emotion) going on the court.”

As a youngster, Fryer preferred surfing to basketball and even competed on a limited basis. But he said he realized that “basketball could be my ticket to college.”

At Corona del Mar High School, Fryer averaged nearly 29 points as a senior, earning all-Southern Section honors.

Westhead, though, was one of the few coaches to recruit the 6-foot-2 guard. That summer, the NCAA instituted the three-point shot. Fryer and Loyola were a perfect couple.

He started five games as a freshman, but his season was cut short by an ankle injury. The next year, when the late Hank Gathers and Kimble became eligible and the Lions really got going, Fryer was the team’s sixth man, averaging 12.6 points and hitting 86 three-pointers.

They formed an unusual nucleus for the Lions, the beach boy from a privileged background teaming with the street-wise pair from the North Philadelphia projects. In his casual attire, Fryer was often the foil for Gathers, the team comic and serious dresser.

“He’d go all the way down (with his criticism), starting at my jacket and working to my shoes,” Fryer said with a grin.

Fryer came into his own as a junior with an average of 22.9 points, scoring 42 on national TV against DePaul and leading the nation with 126 three-point baskets, but he was snubbed for All-West Coast Conference honors. Gathers, who led the nation in scoring and rebounding, was the player of the year.

After a summer in which he gave up surfing to work on his game--”I haven’t surfed since July 18”--Fryer started the season quickly but broke a bone in his shooting hand in the second game against Nevada Reno and sat out the next four.

He returned, wearing a bulky brace on the hand, and scored 22 points in a victory over Oregon State, but the next month proved to be troublesome.

He scored 29 points against Oklahoma on Christmas weekend but made only 10 of 31 shots. Over the next three games, he made only 16 of 56 (29%), and wasn’t much sharper through the first weeks of conference play. He had an eight-point game in late January at Gonzaga, where he took only seven shots. And the hand still hurt.

“I was kind of worried--very worried,” he said. “My confidence was shot. I was open and I couldn’t make the shot. And in shooting, I’m convinced, about 75% is confidence.”

He called his personal shooting coach, Tom Marumoto of Newport Beach, who told him it was just a matter of the hand injury.

“He said not to change my shot to adjust to the hand.”

Westhead gave the same advice he’d been giving for four years.

“Coach told me to keep shooting,” Fryer said.

As the season rolled into February, the hand healed and the feeling was back. In successive games against San Francisco, he made 20 of 28 shots, including a 10-for-12 game at USF, where he made all seven three-point shots.

Ten days later, he helped beat Pepperdine with 40 points--hitting nine of 15 from three-point range--and in the final weekend of the regular season, he scored 33 points against San Diego, making nine of 14 three-point shots.

This time, he has earned all-conference honors. And with Gathers scoring inside and Kimble and Fryer supplying three-point punch, the Lions appeared ready to roll through the conference tournament. Then Gathers collapsed in the second game and died that evening.

The next day, Fryer, wearing dark glasses, was on TV screens across the nation saying, “We don’t understand how a guy that strong could leave us so quickly.” He added that he didn’t care if the team ever played again.

But that feeling evolved into a determination to play the NCAA tournament as a tribute to Gathers, and Fryer has successfully channeled his emotion into controlled fury on the court. Picking up on a reporter’s description, Fryer has begun talking about the Lions as “an emotional hurricane.”

He said Gathers’ spirit “really comes back right before we play games,” adding: “Just before we took the court (Friday), I was on the verge of crying. It was really weird, it hit me all of a sudden. It made me play hard.

“I’m definitely focusing on the tournament. That’s where I want to be right now, playing basketball. If we lose, I’ll probably want to get away for a while. Now, I’m fired up to win this tournament, and I think we can do it.”

And he remains on cordial terms with the hoop. Asked to sum up his hot hand in beach terms, Fryer says he addresses the rim: “Hey dude, let’s party.”