Competition Takes West to New Heights : Basketball: At 6-feet-3, Southern California College’s leading rebounder isn’t afraid to tangle with taller players.

D’Andre Brown must have thought he was about to get another easy basket. After all, Brown, a 6-foot-5, 220-pound Christ College Irvine forward, was scoring inside with ease against Southern California College, and another entry pass was almost in his hands.

Not this time.

Mike West, who had been unsuccessfully trying to keep the ball from Brown, poked it away, setting in motion a scramble that ended with a screeching floor burn at midcourt. West went down, came up with the ball and soon after SCC had two points.

It was a definitive play for West, whose hustle often makes up for his relative lack of size. Listed at 6-3 in the Southern California College program, West is the team’s leading rebounder and often is assigned to guard players as tall or taller than Brown.

“He’s a fierce competitor,” SCC Coach Bill Reynolds said. “And I think that’s what enables him at 6-2 1/2--we’ll say 6-3--to compete against the big boys and still average 8 1/2 or nine rebounds a game.

“That’s what makes his contribution so significant. He’s not quick, he’s not big; he doesn’t jump high; he just manages to get the job done.”

Reynolds has had other scrappy standouts in his 11 seasons at SCC, in which the Vanguards have compiled a 241-95 record. In fact, West could be a prototype for the player who best fits into Reynolds’ system, which stresses aggressive man-to-man defense and push-it-up-the-floor offense.

Seven-foot centers are rare in the NAIA District 3, but the Vanguards, who are 15-5 and ranked 19th in the NAIA Division I, don’t have a starter taller than 6-4, so Reynolds emphasizes results over bulk.

“It typically evolves to where we just play players who can play,” Reynolds said. “If you’re over 6-2, you’re going to be mixing it up inside more often than not. Especially this year. We have a 5-8 point guard and a 5-10 shooting guard, so if you’re 6-2, you’re a giant.

“(West) is one of our giants.”

More than his lack of height would seem to conspire against West being one of the top rebounders in District 3.

First there’s the matter of a year-long layoff from college basketball. Then there’s the nagging knee injury that threatened to end his competitive career.

In the spring of 1990, Kevin Kennedy, Reynolds’ son-in-law and a former player at Rhode Island, Grand Canyon and Point Loma Nazarene, told Reynolds about a San Diego recreation league player who was about 6-3 but played as if he were 6-6.

West, who had averaged 20 points as a senior at Fallbrook High School in 1988, was taking a year off from college after playing one season at nearby Point Loma Nazarene.

During his freshman season, he had played about 10 minutes a game for Point Loma’s varsity and was the most valuable player on the junior varsity. He said the daily grind of practicing with both teams, sometimes for a total of five hours, wore on him. He also took up surfing--his dormitory was next to the beach--and after basketball and the beach, he had little time left for studying.

West had a 3.5 grade-point average in high school, but when his GPA dropped below 2.0 he decided he had had enough of college.

“I was just kind of burned out on the whole school situation,” he said. “So I took a year off and it made me realize I wanted to go back.”

During the year off, West worked for a heating and air conditioning company and took classes at Palomar College. He turned down offers to try out for the basketball team at the two-year school.

Eventually, however, he began to miss basketball and started playing in recreational leagues. He had decided to return to Point Loma before Reynolds’ son-in-law pointed him toward SCC.

But about a month after telling Reynolds he wanted to attend SCC, West injured his knee while playing with a friend. The injury required arthroscopic surgery and pins in the knee to hold bone chips in place.

Despite the surgery, Reynolds’ offer of a partial scholarship was still available and West recovered sufficiently enough to start playing in December, soon after he became eligible.

West had earned a spot in the starting lineup before he reinjured the knee midway through the Golden State Athletic Conference season. Although he returned to play in the Vanguards’ season-ending loss to Biola in the District 3 semifinals, West’s season was all but over.

During the off-season, West continued to work on strengthening his knee, but he reinjured it in a summer league game in August.

“I felt a pain throughout the game and then at the end it started swelling up,” West said. “I could barely walk the next day.”

The prognosis wasn’t promising.

“We thought this was just going to be an on-going problem for him,” Reynolds said. “Evidently one of his doctors said it was the type of thing, that in order for it to be completely healed, he would need a total reconstruction and it might be another year before he could play again.”

West didn’t want to go through another long rehabilitation, so he took the other option his doctor gave him: more work in the weight room.

Thus far this season, the knee has held up. West has played in all 19 games and was averaging 10.4 points and 8.1 rebounds before Saturday’s game against The Master’s College. Reynolds allows West to sit out of practice when the knee gets sore and plays him less in games against weaker opponents. West says the pain is always with him.

“I just know I have to play through the pain if I want to keep playing,” West said. “I never really think about hurting it again.”

Aggressive plays such as the steal against Christ College Irvine show that West isn’t protecting any part of his body. He had played despite being ill much of the week before the game and a fever that soared before game time.

“That just really shows how much he wants to win,” Reynolds said. “And it tends to carry over to our other players, because some of our kids are somewhat passive and when they see him--a guy who’s been sick all week with a 103-degree fever--getting on the floor and getting after it, that has to help.”