Curtain Call for Nathan : Ex-Capistrano Valley Guard Wins Over BYU Fans With Clutch Shots, Unselfish Play

Nathan Call, Brigham Young basketball player and folk hero, was putting on his pants--one leg at a time--when assistant coach Tony Ingle stuck his head in the locker room door.

“They’re calling for Nate the Great out there,” Ingle said.

Even in the San Diego Sports Arena--a place far away from Provo, Utah--Call was besieged by adoring fans after last week’s victory over San Diego State.

Kids called out, “Nate, Nate, Nate,” and asked for his autograph. Strangers patted him on the back. Someone even handed him a box of cookies.

All this for a somewhat squat, 6-foot point guard with Chia Pet-like hair.

“You know, I got letters last season calling me stupid because I was playing Nathan,” BYU Coach Roger Reid said. “They would say, ‘If you had any coaching sense at all, you would get him out of the lineup.’ Well, I guess I could write a few letters myself now.”

Call, it seems, has played his way into the hearts and minds of BYU fans.

A year ago, he was the goat--make that scapegoat--now he’s a hero. It has been one extreme, then the other.

But Call has never been one to be swayed by public opinion.

“Any time your team is losing, people are going to point the finger at someone,” he said. “I guess people thought it was me last season. I just kept playing. People will say what they want.”

People are saying a lot this year, all of it good.

Call, a graduate of Capistrano Valley High School, is averaging nine points and seven assists for the Cougars, who are 16-4. But the numbers don’t begin to tell the story.

“Nate is a clutch guy,” BYU guard Mark Heslop said. “He gets the ball to people where they can score. He’s very unselfish. But when we need a big basket, Nate usually gets it for us.”

Such a moment came against Colorado State recently. The Cougars trailed by two points with eight seconds left. Call dribbled the length of the court, pulled up and made a 10-foot jumper to tie the score.

“There wasn’t enough time to set up a play, so coach said, ‘Give the ball to Nate and let him go as far as he can,’ ” Call said.

Said Reid: “Nate gets those killer baskets. He doesn’t score a lot, but when he does, it kills the other team. Heck, I love to see other teams dare him to shoot.”

Call finished with 23 points, including six free throws in overtime that clinched the victory.

“That’s why we call him the ‘Little Stud,’ ” Heslop said.

A nickname that doesn’t exactly fit his appearance.

Call doesn’t cut an imposing figure. He doesn’t have great leaping ability and isn’t blessed with great speed or quickness. As for quickness, well, he doesn’t move in a blink of an eye, or even several blinks.

In short, he’s no Danny Ainge. But he’s no Danny DeVito, either.

“The first time you see Nathan, you think, ‘Who is this guy?’ ” Reid said. “He’s this slow guy who’s a little chubby. You see him play once and come away thinking he’s OK. But you watch him over the course of a season, game after game, and he’ll impress you.”

Call, a senior, doesn’t talk much about his play. On the court, he rarely shows emotion. He just runs the offense and defense with a steady hand.

A big basket might result in a small smile from Call--maybe.

“I’ve never seen anything faze Nathan,” said forward John Fish, who rooms with Call. “He just goes out and does his job and doesn’t make a big deal about it.”

Reserved or not, there is no doubt who’s in charge on the court. Call’s leadership is a big reason the Cougars are second in the Western Athletic Conference behind Texas El Paso.

“He’s the best point guard in the conference,” said Jim Brandenburg, San Diego State’s coach until he was fired Tuesday.

Such statements might have brought some whiplash-inducing double takes from BYU fans a year ago. The Cougars were 6-7 entering conference play, hardly the stuff their followers were accustomed to.

Someone needed to be blamed, and Call, who was struggling, won the caucus. Never mind that he had started 10 games as a freshman or that he was a key member of the 1987-88 team, which won its first 17 games.

It was a case of “what have you done for us lately?”

“There were times it felt like it was coming from everybody,” Call said. “I can understand that. I wasn’t playing very well.”

Call’s problems were mostly physical. He had returned the previous summer after a two-year mission in Bolivia.

The layoff alone would have been difficult enough, but three weeks before his mission ended, he suffered third-degree burns in a campfire accident.

Call and other missionaries were in Caranave, a city 90 miles south of La Paz. They had received a special treat of marshmallows and were roasting them.

“The campfire started to die out, so I took some rubbing alcohol and poured it on it,” Call said. “The flames went up for a moment, then died down. So I poured a little more alcohol on the fire. The flames shot back into the bottle and it exploded.”

Call suffered burns on his legs and right arm. He returned to the United States a week later and entered the UCI Medical Center. Call was treated as an outpatient for a month and was told to stay out of the sun for a year.

It was two months before he could start playing basketball again.

“I was really lucky, because it could have been a lot worse,” Call said. “They were worried that the burns would get infected. So they had to scrub the wounds down every day. It was very painful.”

Call managed to win a starting spot last season but was inconsistent early and wound up shooting only 39%.

“It was going to take him more than four or five games to get back in the groove,” Reid said. “He just needed time.”

Call finally silenced the critics. He scored 24 points and set a school record by making six of six three-pointers in an overtime loss to Utah. He averaged 10 points a game the final six games and helped the Cougars win the WAC tournament.

BYU finished 21-13 and reached the second round of the NCAA tournament.

Call’s success has carried over to this season. He lost 15 pounds during the summer and was ready to go at the start of the season.

He scored 30 points in the second game, against Tulsa. He also set records with 12 assists in one game and 22 in two games at a tournament in Orlando, Fla.

“I don’t do anything fancy, and I don’t try to,” Call said. “I just try to get the ball to the right people at the right time.”

Which is what makes Nate so great.