Recruiting Isn’t Hot Fun in the Summertime for Holland : Basketball: New Titan coach says competition is brisk for prospects who are good, but not good enough for elite programs.

Brad Holland just closed out the most grueling month of the college basketball recruiting season with a hospital visit and a week of bed rest.

Geez, they weren’t kidding when they said this Cal State Fullerton coaching job would be tough.

Actually, it wasn’t the demands of the new position that sent Holland from outpatient to temporarily out-of-commission status. The former UCLA assistant, who was named the Titans’ head coach in April, is recovering from a hernia operation performed July 24.

But during his first few months on the job, Holland has found that recruiting for CSUF--four letters with considerably less allure than UCLA--is a rigorous task that can keep the stomach churning.

“They didn’t tell me I’d be straining so much I’d get a hernia,” joked Holland, who played for UCLA and the Lakers. “It was distracting because there was a lot of pain. It was uncomfortable to sit for long periods of time, and in July you sit a lot, watching a lot of games. I was constantly fidgeting, trying to get in a comfortable position.”

It probably didn’t help that every time Holland saw a top, cream-of-the-crop Division I prospect, he had to practically shield his eyes and sing a Hammer song to himself.

Can’t touch this.

“It gets frustrating because you come across players you know aren’t going to be interested in your school because they’re too good,” Holland said. “You watch a great kid play and you’ve got to stop looking at him because you’re wasting your time.

“You can’t recruit him because you have no shot at getting him. You can’t chase pipe dreams because you waste a lot of time, energy and money. When you have a restricted budget, like we do, you have to be very efficient in recruiting. You adjust quickly and become very realistic.”

Holland spent most of July--a full month during which college coaches can evaluate players--scouring Southern California and some surrounding areas for talent. He traveled to camps and tournaments in Irvine, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, Carson, Los Angeles, Bakersfield and Las Vegas in search of potential Titans.

It was quite different than his past searches for potential Bruins. Holland, who has never been a head coach, found himself evaluating a wider range of players and turning over more stones in a more confined area.

“At UCLA you hobnob around the country looking at the best of the best because you need to compete with the Arizonas and Dukes and Indianas, and there’s a good chance you’ll reach the NCAA tournament,” Holland said. “You really looked at a much smaller pool of players and they were easier to find because everyone knows about them. Rarely do you come across a diamond in the rough or sleeper because they’re established players, in the top tournaments, and they’re already billboarded.

“Fullerton is a mid-level (Division I) school, and there’s so many players to look at. There are players on the borderline who might or might not get recruited by a UCLA. Then you look at guys who might be Division I players or they might be Division II. We look at everything in between.”

And so do a lot of other schools. The pool of colleges going after these players is bigger than Holland is used to competing against.

“At UCLA, your only local competition is USC, and then you get into Stanford, Cal, Arizona, Arizona State and some national programs,” Holland said. “Here, you’re competing against so many more California schools like UC Irvine, Pepperdine, Loyola Marymount, Fresno State, San Diego State, UC Santa Barbara, Long Beach.”

Holland signed one player for next season before the summer recruiting rush, Mt. San Jacinto College guard Don Leary, and former Washington guard James French is transferring to Fullerton and will be eligible for 1993-94.

Holland might sign one more player for the season, but most of his recent efforts concentrated on younger high school players who could help Fullerton in the future. And when he got into that process, he discovered a strange phenomenon.

“Sometimes you’ll be recruiting a player and--this sounds funny--but you don’t want him to get much better because if he does, you won’t be able to recruit him,” Holland said. “I’m sure everyone at our level can relate to this. There’s a lot more subtleties and nuances to recruiting at this level. Still, you are recruiting Division I players who are good.”

Holland’s goal is to move Fullerton into the upper echelon of the mid-sized class, a level where the Titans could contend for an NCAA or NIT bid.

To do that, he must attract those players who are on the fringe of the elite class--guys who might not be good enough to sign with UCLA or Arizona out of high school but who might develop into standout Division I players in college.

He also has to project raw high school talent--kids who may not even be highly regarded on the prep level but who could develop into solid college players.

“Typically, if you’re looking at a high school player on the front line, he’s probably thin and has a ways to go in terms of strength and physical maturity, and he’ll probably grow some,” Holland said. “From a guard standpoint, you’ll go after a shooting guard who is 6 foot 2 instead of 6-5, a good shooter without height. Because if he was 6-5, like a Shon Tarver type, he’d be recruited by UCLA.”

Leary is a classic Titan recruit. He’s an excellent outside shooter who set a career three-point field-goal record at Mt. San Jacinto, but he’s only 6-1 1/2.

“If he was 6-5, there’d be no question with his shooting ability that he’d be an upper Division I prospect,” Holland said. “He was looking at some Big Sky Conference schools and hadn’t made up his mind. Along came a local Big West Conference school, and he became interested.”

Fullerton doesn’t have the college basketball tradition or academic reputation that UCLA has, but there are some selling points. The Titans play in a respected, if not highly regarded, conference and they have sent nine players, including Leon Wood and Cedric Ceballos, to the NBA.

For the standout community college player, Fullerton offers the chance to make an immediate impact. For the fringe, upper-crust high school prospect, it offers a chance for immediate playing time instead of extended time on a national power’s bench.

“We more or less have to make our own reputation and tradition now,” Holland said. “But I’m really proud to be here and begin that process. I don’t want to come across like we’re chopped liver and UCLA is the greatest. Fullerton has its strengths, and this is a step up for me because I have the opportunity to run a program in a good conference.”