A SLEEPING GIANT BEGINS TO AWAKEN : Only Time Will Tell if the Academic Problems of CSUN Center Percy Fisher Have Been Put to Bed

The catcalls and boos rained down on Percy Fisher after a free throw found nothing but air at the Sports Arena recently. Earlier, Cal State Northridge’s sophomore center had dunked against USC, but now that feat was overshadowed.

Such is the fate of the late bloomer burdened with high expectations.

One minute, Fisher resembles a bona fide NCAA Division I player, the next, NAIA material.

The biggest obstacle in Fisher’s path toward realizing his potential has nothing to do with basketball, however. It is about getting out of bed, going to class and keeping up with assignments.

Already, Fisher’s lack of attendance and poor study habits have cost him one semester of his collegiate career and nearly driven him from the game.

From the beginning, Percy Fisher Jr. did not like school, but his parents, Percy Sr. and Justine, viewed it as the most important aspect of his life.

As youngsters growing up in large families in the South, Fisher’s parents could not afford college, so they did their best to ensure that their four children would have the opportunity.

Although Percy Jr. grew up in a working-class section of San Francisco near Candlestick Park, his father, a construction worker, and his mother, an employee at a telephone company, saved enough money to send him to a Catholic grade school.

Unfortunately, the value of education escaped young Fisher.

“School has always been a drag,” he said. “I got tired of the little uniforms, the little sweaters. I wanted to wear tennis shoes and jeans.

“But my parents explained it over and over again. Then it hit me, how much they were sacrificing for me. My parents did everything for me. They always wanted me to go to college.”

After Percy graduated from All Hallows grade school, his parents sent him to Riordan, an all-boys Catholic high school. Fisher breezed along with a 2.6 grade-point average until the prospect of a college basketball scholarship prompted him to raise it to 2.9.

Although Fisher passed the Scholastic Aptitude Test with a 760 on his first try, his father was not pleased that the score was only 60 points above the minimum requirement. Despite his father’s best efforts, Fisher could not be persuaded to again take the test.

“I weaseled out,” he said.

At Cal State Northridge, Fisher’s carefree attitude toward school began to catch up with him. “I barely squeezed by,” he said of the 2.4 GPA he posted in the fall semester of 1989.

The following semester, Fisher harbored a secret that was to have dire consequences.

“The whole time I knew I’d be (academically) ineligible (for the following fall), but I didn’t tell anyone,” Fisher said. “I thought I could make it up in the summer.”

Fisher’s ineligibility stemmed from his dropping two classes without notifying university officials. Consequently, he was given two U’s--the equivalent of Fs for grade-point purposes.

The lack of credit in those classes lowered Fisher’s units to 12, the minimum required to stay eligible.

When poor attendance in an 8 a.m. astronomy class resulted in an F, Fisher fell three credits shy of the minimum required. Moreover, his semester GPA of 1.4 lowered his cumulative average to a 1.8--below the minimum 2.0 required for athletes to retain their eligibility.

“I was disappointing myself. I like to sleep. I like to stay in bed,” he said. “I wasn’t (in class) enough to know the material.”

Fisher believed that he could regain his academic standing in summer school and be ready for his sophomore season.

Over the summer, Fisher took a business-law class at Mission College in San Fernando. It met at night, he found it interesting, and he earned a B-plus. But his GPA still was too low. He needed at least a C in a summer school class at Northridge to bring it to 2.0.

The only class available was a sign language class that met at 9 a.m. Fisher overslept and missed it twice. Although he did extra credit to amend for his penchant to sleep, he still wound up with a C-minus, leaving him ineligible for CSUN’s NCAA Division I debut.

Depressed, Fisher made a feeble attempt the first one-third of the fall semester to regain his eligibility for the spring semester.

Finally, he woke up--literally--and went to class.

“I was tired of being depressed about it,” Fisher said. “I was being stupid and naive.”

By the end of the semester, Fisher was engrossed in his studies.

“I was pretty much killing myself,” he said. “Staying up late and studying. I was really working hard and asking myself, ‘Why can’t I do this all the time?’ I know I can do it if I start off right and not make it hard on myself.”

Convinced that he had raised his GPA above 2.0, Fisher prepared to rejoin the team for games at Idaho State and Weber State on Dec. 28 and 29, a week after the semester ended.

But one of Fisher’s grades was unexpectedly low, leaving him with a cumulative GPA of 1.99.

“That was a pretty low point, a pretty angry point,” Fisher said. “I thought, ‘No way, can this be true, it had to make a mistake.’ I thought, ‘Oh, my God, I worked my butt off for this.’ ”

CSUN Coach Pete Cassidy had no choice but to leave Fisher behind while Fisher tried to determine if a mistake had been made with his grades. With his teammates gone and the rest of the student body on semester break, Fisher was alone and lonely.

“I couldn’t get any lower,” he said. “I did not leave the house. I stayed there and thought about everything. . . . I looked back on my whole life.

“Something so simple you don’t do and it wrecks your whole life, getting up and getting dressed and going to school. If you are halfway paying attention and doing a little studying you’ll get by.”

Fisher decided that if he could not convince the professor that a mistake had been made with his grades he would return home, enroll in a junior college, improve his grades and ask Cassidy to take him back.

Such drastic steps were not required. The professor acknowledged the mistake, lifting a 10-month burden and allowing Fisher to return to the court.

Fisher’s time away from the game was costly because he has been playing basketball for only four years. He grew up playing baseball with his dad, a former minor leaguer in the Pittsburgh Pirates organization.

A growth spurt his freshman year, from 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds--”fat,” according to Fisher--to 6-4 and 170 sparked his interest in basketball.

Fisher played sparingly his junior year and although he started as a senior, by the end of the season he was a reserve. In the final game of his prep career, he played only six minutes.

“I played with Ray Kelly and Dwayne Fontana (now of UC Santa Barbara and Arizona State) and they had determination and a lot of heart,” Fisher said. “I didn’t have a heart and I didn’t have a coach behind me.”

College recruiters, while impressed by his speed and his 6-7, 212-pound frame, were turned off by Fisher’s lack of playing time.

But former Northridge assistant Rusty Smith, who had seen Fisher in an AAU game over the summer, stuck by him.

“I didn’t have to tell him anything,” Fisher said. “He could see that I had a great set of parents, a great school and it was not my fault that I didn’t start.

“Even though I didn’t have a great career at Riordan, in the summers I tore it up. I knew if I could get a scholarship I could pay my parents back.”

Fisher’s summer coach, Lex Corrales, coaxed outstanding performances from Fisher. But it took time for Corrales to know Fisher, who joined Corrales’ Stockton Stars team when he was 15.

“The problem I had that year is that he basically wanted to sleep,” Corrales said. “We had to go get him for games, excursions and dinners.”

Once Fisher got to the games he couldn’t withstand the pressure of competition. “As the pressure of the tournament would go along, he’d say he had a headache so I’d sit him out,” Corrales said. “Halfway through the games he’d say he was OK. So from that experience I learned to talk to him before games, baby him, and then he’d bust a gut.”

Along with a fear of starting big games, Fisher developed a pattern of taking himself out of physical games.

Before Fisher’s senior year, Corrales took him aside at a tournament in Long Beach and told him that several college coaches would be watching.

“I said, ‘You can’t miss any games, this is important. You play the whole time and you could get a scholarship.’ Sure enough, he tumbled after a ball hit his nose and was bleeding all over, but this time he refused to come out.”

According to Corrales, encouragement is the key. “Yelling and criticizing doesn’t work,” he said.

It is tempting to yell, however, when Fisher doesn’t assert himself. His lack of intensity usually translates into a paucity of rebounds and a flurry of missed shots.

Against USC, Fisher pulled down only one rebound. Against Wisconsin-Milwaukee, he missed seven of eight free throws, and against U. S. International, he missed three successive shots under the basket and wound up flat on his face.

At other times, Fisher demonstrates the “marvelous physical talents” that Cassidy raves about.

Against Eastern Washington, Fisher connected on 10 of 12 shots for a career-high 21 points in 24 minutes. In CSUN’s biggest road win, at Loyola-Chicago, he scored 17 points in 19 minutes and grabbed six rebounds. Against Northeastern Illinois he hit six of eight shots and pulled down five rebounds in 13 minutes.

In just 13.7 minutes per game, Fisher is averaging 8.7 points and 3.6 rebounds. He will make his first start tonight against Boise State in place of the injured Todd Bowser.

“I can feel my potential,” Fisher said. “Sometimes I do things that even surprise me.”