New-Found Aggressiveness Puts Loll on a Roll : Basketball: Thousand Oaks forward has mixed toughness with talent to become a more complete player.

A year ago, the last name might have fit his style of play.

Chris Loll, as in hang loose, was a 6-foot-4 junior forward for Thousand Oaks High with the physical tools required of a top-flight high school basketball player.

He lacked aggressiveness, however, and opposing players frequently took advantage of that deficiency.

“If a player got rough with me last year, I had a tendency to back off a little,” said Loll, now 6-5 1/2 and 195 pounds. “But this year, I’m a lot tougher mentally. When a player gets rough with me now, it just makes me play that much harder.”

That was evident in the Ventura tournament last week when Loll tied a tournament record with a career-high 40 points in an 84-78 semifinal victory over Camarillo and added 34 in a 103-66 victory over Buena in the final.

Against Camarillo, despite taking a pounding inside, Loll scored 16 points in the fourth quarter, hitting all six of his shots and all four of his free throws. He also had 16 rebounds and three blocked shots in the game.

“He just took his game to another level,” Coach Ed Chevalier said of Loll’s fourth-quarter performance. “He scored. He rebounded and he blocked shots. . . . He’s doing everything a good player is supposed to do.”

Loll, who averaged 15.6 points and 7.0 rebounds a game as a junior, has averages of 27.2 points, 10.9 rebounds and 2.3 blocked shots this season. And he has been consistent, scoring at least 20 points in every game.

He had 99 points, 44 rebounds and 14 blocked shots in three games of the Ventura tournament. Loll was named most valuable player of the tournament, an honor he also received two weeks ago in the Thousand Oaks tournament.

“I’ve worked very hard to get where I am,” Loll said. “It sort of comes with the territory. I went to five basketball camps last summer and that really helped. Playing against some of the best guys in the country really improved my game.”

Loll, who was born in Anchorage, Alaska, before moving to Thousand Oaks with his family in 1980, was bi-coastal last summer, attending camps at Syracuse, N. Y., and Pittsburgh, Pa., as well as Stanford, Cal Poly Pomona and Cal Lutheran.

“He learned a lot at those camps,” Chevalier said, “particularly, that you’ve got to constantly push yourself, whether it’s in practice or in games. His approach to practice and games is much more mature this season.

“I think those camps showed Chris just how many good basketball players there are in this country. And they all push themselves.”

Loll, whose father Scott played at Syracuse in the mid-60s on a team led by former Detroit Piston great Dave Bing, also has become more versatile on offense.

Early in the season, he frequently played on the perimeter, bombing from three-point range, but during the Ventura tournament, he displayed his offensive repertoire inside the key, posting up for turnaround jump shots or driving to the basket.

“I’m mainly an outside player, but lately, the teams we’ve played against have had lineups that allowed me to go inside more,” said the left-handed Loll. “I’ve just tried to take advantage of what’s available to me.”

Chevalier said it was a sign of Loll’s improved understanding of the game. “He found a spot on the floor where he could make the best use of his talents and he kept going back to that spot,” said Chevalier, whose team is 9-1. “And his teammates are looking to him more and more this season.

“Chris was certainly one of the leaders last year in an unspoken kind of way. He was our go-to player, but this year he and the rest of the team are more conscious about it.”