NCAA BASKETBALL TOURNAMENT : Quiet Player Makes Loyola Hard to Stop : West Regional: Guard Walker leaves the glory to teammates. He will try to force the pace against UNLV today.

After being held to 62 points Friday night in its NCAA Regional semifinal victory over Alabama, Loyola Marymount expects to be back in high gear here today against Nevada Las Vegas’ Runnin’ Rebels.

And the man who is counted on to spark the Lions’ explosive offense and tenacious press is the quietest and lowest-scoring member of the cast, point guard Tony Walker.

In today’s 1 p.m. West Regional championship game, Walker will be the one speeding upcourt, trying to outrun the nine other players on the floor.

The teams played Nov. 15 in Las Vegas and UNLV won, 102-91. But Saturday, Rebel Coach Jerry Tarkanian’s main memory of that game was “their point guard blowing by us.”

Said Loyola Coach Paul Westhead: “The pace was extremely fast early on. Tony Walker was a blur.”

Opposing coaches since then have said that while worrying about the scoring of Bo Kimble, Jeff Fryer and the late Hank Gathers, the key to stopping Loyola is to slow down the point guards.

A Riverside native who transferred to Loyola from Ventura College, the 6-foot-1 junior made his major college debut that night at UNLV, scoring two points and getting five assists.

While starting all but one game since then, Walker has averaged 5.7 points, 7.2 assists and two steals in about 22 minutes a game. On a team that sometimes shoots 100 times a night, he takes four shots a game. And says about as many words.

But during Friday’s 62-60 victory, Walker took several early jump shots and ended up missing all five he took, with only one assist. “I was kind of frustrated, doing things I don’t normally do,” he said Saturday. “I just wanted to try to get the pace going.

“I always thought we could get as far as we are now. I’m doing exactly what I expected when I came here--distribute, get the ball to open people and play good defense. The key (today) is to push the ball and get the shots we normally get.”

Walker has played the entire season with a broken bone in his right (shooting) wrist that was originally injured two years ago and never healed. So Westhead limits him to about half a game, splitting time with sixth man Terrell Lowery. The two also play together in Westhead’s smaller, pressing lineup.

“The way he pushes the ball, I don’t think Tony could physically play more than he does,” Westhead said.

Said Walker: “I can take it if we have to play 30 minutes, but we won’t be as effective. When me and Terrell are in the game together . . . it makes us even quicker on the press.”

Walker said he plans to have surgery on the wrist after the season, then begin working on his jump shot. He has an awkward shot and rarely shoots unless he has a path to the basket. In most games he will get a few layups on explosive drives. “If they play our wings, I’m gonna take it straight to the hoop,” he said.

In Loyola’s first game against UNLV, Walker said Rebel guards Greg Anthony and Anderson Hunt and forward Stacey Augmon tried to intimidate the Lions.

“We really didn’t care. We wanted to show them we’re not a team that’s going to be rattled or scared. Coach told me and Terrell their guards are just like anybody else--just push it down their throat. They had a lot of turnovers the first game. Greg Anthony is a great guard, but if he tries to break the press by himself, he’ll have some problems.”

Tarkanian said the press is what has carried Loyola.

“I can’t believe what they get out of their press,” he said. “I can’t remember a team getting that much out of their press in a long time--you have to go back to John Wooden (at UCLA) and his zone press. They will gamble more in the backcourt than any team I’ve ever seen.”

In the first game, the most intimidating factor for Walker was a bomb scare that was phoned in to Thomas & Mack Arena as Loyola was in the midst of a 20-2 run. The game was stopped for about 10 minutes and several celebrities in the crowd, including boxer Sugar Ray Leonard, left. Loyola never got the game back to that pace again.

“It affected me a lot,” Walker said. “I was worried, ‘Is it a real bomb?’ Hank Gathers was telling us it was just a joke, but when I saw Sugar Ray leave the game I was thinking about it.”

Walker now is thinking about continuing to win for Gathers, who was his road roommate. Walker was one of the first players to learn of Gathers’ death March 4.

“We’re on a mission,” he said. “We just want to go out and play like Hank did. He always gave 110%. Hank wanted to win at least two games in the NCAAs. We’ve done what Hank wanted to do.”

The Lions (26-5), seeded 11th in the West, are the lowest remaining seeded team in the tournament and are facing the No. 1 seed in UNLV (32-5). With an enrollment of 3,700, Loyola is also the smallest remaining school.

Anthony said the Rebels, while aware of Loyola’s dedication to Gathers’ memory, “have the opportunity to fulfill what we call our destiny as well.”

So for Loyola, the equalizer is speed and the press, with Walker keying both.

“My job is to push the ball as hard as I can,” he said. “I don’t care who’s in the way. If I can’t go around them, sometimes I go right over them.”