A Workmanlike Effort : Senior Brown Sharpens His Basketball Abilities : High schools: After leading Lobos to their most successful season in years, he plans to attend Cal State Long Beach.

After his sophomore season at Workman High in Industry, when he averaged 19.6 points and made the All-Valle Vista League team, Eric Brown was advised by basketball Coach Rick Cook to consider transferring to another school.

It wasn’t that the coach actually wanted Brown to leave. With an acute shortage of size and talent in his program, Cook simply felt that it might be in Brown’s best interest to go elsewhere.

“I’m from back East, and I had seen and coached good athletes before and knew that you needed to play against good talent to improve,” Cook said. “The thing I was concerned about was the caliber of the players here and the time I would have to work with him.”

In retrospect, the 6-foot-6, 195-pound swingman is happy he decided to stay at Workman.

“He’s a really good coach and I don’t think it would’ve been right for me to leave,” Brown said. “If I felt I could’ve gone somewhere else and done as well I would’ve gone. But everything has worked out for me here.”

Brown, an 18-year-old senior, is the school’s all-time leading scorer. He averages 31.4 points and 15.5 rebounds to rank among the leaders in the San Gabriel Valley in both categories this season.

Brown, who will attended Cal State Long Beach in the fall on an athletic scholarship, is leading Workman to its most successful season in years.

The Lobos have a 12-8 record. They tied Northview for the league title and play host to St. Paul in the first round of the Southern Section III-A Division playoffs Friday night.

Brown’s success this season may be partly a result of hard work during the summer.

“I worked on my shooting and dribbling and it really helped,” he said. “I spent most of my time over the summer with the coach and it just gives you the knowledge that you can play at (a high) level and be the best that you can.”

Cook also tried to motivate Brown before the season started.

“I had talked to Eric and we set a goal for him to be Player of the Year in our league and maybe even Player of the Year in the valley, and right now there’s no one in our league even near him in ability,” he said.

Cook says that Brown has the natural ability to excel at basketball.

“He has the two things you need to be a good player: the size and the shooting ability,” he said. “With those two things you can go a long way, and he has both of those things.”

Despite his size and the fact that he is the only player in the Lobos’ lineup taller than 6-0, Cook is hesitant to limit Brown to playing inside. In fact, Brown is an excellent three-point shooter, having made 43% of his three-point attempts this season.

“I’m not a coach who likes to put positions on players,” Cook said. “He can play inside and outside and moves all over the place.

“I think one of the big injustices you could do for a player like Eric is to stick him inside and play him there just because he is your tallest player. He’s a college prospect and we like to use him wherever we can.”

The coach said Brown might be having an even better season if he didn’t have to face double-teams and special defenses.

“I think he could be averaging 45 a game if he didn’t have to face as good defenses as he has, but he has that in him,” Cook said.

Cook is impressed by Brown’s development as a player.

“I’ve seen a lot of improvement in his overall game,” Cook said. “What he’s missing is mostly technical things. It’s the things you pick up from working out and playing a lot and getting the coaching.”

Brown said: “I’ve (improved) from watching tapes of Michael Jordan over and over again and just from playing a lot of basketball. I guess it’s also just from my instincts, and when I don’t know something the coach is always there to help me realize what I’m doing wrong.”

But Cook said Brown’s growth away from the court has left the biggest impression.

“I think the three most important things in a player are what kind of a person he is, what kind of a student he is and what kind of a player he is,” Cook said. “I think one of the big things about Eric is he has grown as a person and as a student over the last three years. That’s more important to me than how he’s grown as a player, and I know that’s important to his mom.”

In the classroom, Brown was encouraged by the fact that he had a 3.0 grade-point average for the last grading period--the first time he has accomplished the feat in high school.

“It’s been much better for me this year because I used to always worry if I was going to be eligible,” Brown said. “But now I’m not worried about making the grades. I know I can do it.”

Cook said Brown’s growth as a person and student has helped him on the court.

“He’s really grown in his emotional control on the court since I’ve been here,” Cook said. “To face the teams and the defenses he has faced, the most important factor for him has been his emotional control. There’s no way he could do the things that he’s been doing if he didn’t have the emotional control and maturity.”

Brown may have been forced to mature at an earlier age because his father, Blane, died in a boating accident nine years ago. That has drawn Brown closer to his mother, Addie Turner, who has since remarried.

“When a young man loses his father early in life, I think they tend to depend on their mother a little too much and I think he was a little too dependent on her at first,” Cook said. “But now he’s a lot more responsible for his own actions, and I think that means a lot more than anything he could’ve learned as a player.”

Not that Brown’s affection for his mother didn’t play a role in his decision to attend Long Beach in the fall.

“We’ve always been pretty close,” Brown said. “If I went to one of the other schools that recruited me it would’ve been hard for her to get to my games. I think she’s only missed one of my games here and she was sick at the time.”

Brown, who was recruited as a shooting guard, said he received 40 to 50 letters and numerous phone calls from prospective colleges before he signed a national letter of intent with the 49ers during the NCAA’s early signing period in November.

He said he also considered Colorado and Fresno State, although the 49ers were always his first choice. Brown said he was happy to have the recruiting ordeal behind him before the season started.

“I became real close with the coaches there (at Long Beach), but I also wanted to be free of all the hassles of being recruited,” he said. “I had a lot of calls coming in late at night and I was always tired. But I basically knew where I wanted to go and I’m happy with the way everything has turned out.”

So is Cook, who is looking forward to watching Brown compete at Long Beach.

“I’m anxious to see him play college ball, where he will get a chance to play against normal defenses,” he said. “He’s just scratched the surface of his ability.”

But all things considered, Cook doesn’t have any complaints about the way Brown’s high school career has turned out, either.