Titan Job Is Already Giving Gray Hairs to Coach Holland

John Wooden never had to go through this, Brad Holland must have thought as he sat there, smock pulled up to his neck, with makeup artists gluing strips of latex to his cheeks, lathering beige foundation on his nose and assaulting his hair with some kind of snow-white aerosol spray.

Holland was aging while they worked: 45 . . . 55 . . . 65.

By the time they were done with him, Holland looked like Billy Crystal’s old Catskills comedian in “Mr. Saturday Night,” complete with sagging jowls, age spots above the brow and eye lines so deep that his crow’s feet had crow’s feet.

“This better be worth a couple wins,” Holland told Larry Zucker, the Cal State Fullerton marketing whiz whose gift for a promotional gag assigned Holland to this seat inside the makeup department at NBC Studios.

See--and bear with me through this--a couple weeks ago, Zucker hatched a scheme to increase home attendance at Titan basketball games this season. The idea, according to the official wording of the official press release is for “fans attending games in Titan Gym during the Big West schedule (to) be admitted free of charge if they naturally possess or adopt for the night one of the identifying trademarks of the rival coaches.”

What this means--still hanging in there?--is that on Jan. 28, all fans wearing glasses will be admitted free to the San Jose State game because San Jose Coach Stan Morrison wears glasses. And on Jan. 30, all fans dressed in golf apparel will be waved through to the Pacific game because Pacific Coach Bob Thomason, ahem, likes to golf. And on Feb. 18, all “bald or balding fans” will be let into the Cal State Long Beach game because, you got it, Long Beach Coach Seth Greenberg has a long forehead.

Needing promotional photos for the promotion, Zucker dragged Holland, Fullerton’s new basketball coach, to Burbank to pose in bookwormish glasses, argyle golf sweaters, fake mustache (UC Irvine Coach Rod Baker has a real one) and old-age makeup--since Nevada Coach Len Stevens is 50 years old and all fans 50 years and older are going to be admitted free to the Nevada game.

“I looked more like 75,” Holland says with a laugh. “I looked like a decrepit old codger . . . no offense, Len.”

Holland left the grueling four-hour session with “a real appreciation for actors who have to go through the makeup ordeal,” along with a real appreciation for the fact that he doesn’t have to coach against Marianne Stanley or Tara Van Derveer.

Tonight, Holland dons a different guise, one that will qualify as a first-in-a-lifetime experience:

Head Basketball Coach in a Regular-Season Game.

He hasn’t been there before. Not on the high school level, not on the college level, not on any level.

At 36, which is his real age, Holland has exactly four years’ experience as an assistant on Jim Harrick’s staff at UCLA. That is all. He makes his head coaching debut tonight against St. Mary’s, at a Division I university, at a school desperate to awaken the ghost of Bobby Dye and maybe make the NCAA Tournament more than once every 15 years.

Oh, Holland does have two exhibition games under his belt. Against the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and against the Melbourne Tigers.

How’d he do?

“Just like our team,” Holland says. “I was better the second game than the first.”

Initially, Holland had to get accustomed to his seat on the bench.

“That first game, I almost caught myself a couple times thinking, ‘Oh, yeah, I am the head coach,’ ” he says. “I was just sitting back and observing and had to remind myself to stand up and say something. ‘You have the right to stand up and shout and call a timeout. You’re the head coach.’ ”

Holland won both exhibitions, a wise way to start. With Titan football in its final days and Titan baseball still weeks away, Holland has the community’s attention for the moment. To keep it, he needs to defrost the icebox that was John Sneed’s office, and aura, and he needs to collect Ws.

The first objective has been accomplished. Already, Holland has made recruiting inroads at local high schools where Sneed was never spotted or, in some cases, welcome. Mater Dei Coach Gary McKnight lost out to Holland in the Fullerton coaching search last spring, and yet McKnight opened his doors to Holland and next year will send him one of his players--6-6 forward DeVaughn Wright, who signed an early letter of intent.

Holland also talked point guard James French, a one-time starter at the University of Washington, down the coast for a redshirt season. And, in a last-minute scramble, he persuaded Mt. San Jacinto College’s Don Leary, a shooting guard who beat out J.R. Rider for Foothill Conference MVP in 1990-91, to move his three-point jumper to the corner of Nutwood and State College.

As for the leftovers, most of them have developed a noticeable facial twitch. It is known as a smile, which has something to do with being undefeated, but also something to do with the new guy with the whistle.

“Maybe it’s because I’m new at this,” Holland says, “but the wins and losses are going to fade away. If my players come away saying, ‘We respect Coach Holland and he’s a real players coach,’ shoot, that’s all I can ask for.”

Boosters and alumni will be asking for more, which leads Holland to Objective B: Wins and Losses, with the emphasis decidedly leaning to the left.

Holland has inherited a bit less than Rollie Massimino. Walking into Titan Gym in May, Holland found a second-team all-conference forward in Bruce Bowen, a sometimes-brilliant point guard in Aaron Sunderland, a blue-collar postman Sean Williams--owner of the ugliest hook shot in the Big West--and not much else. Fullerton has been picked eighth or ninth in most preseason polls, and Holland, so far, hasn’t seen much need to argue.

“I think we have some limitations,” he says, putting it delicately. “Depth is a big one. We have only four front-line guys in the entire program, which makes it tough to even practice, let alone use up fouls during games.

“We need to be very careful . . . and stay very healthy.”

While Holland was undergoing his transformation to wrinkled old coot, Jay Leno, on the set for early rehearsal, popped his head in and said a quick hello.

“I saw him years ago in a small Santa Monica nightclub when he was just trying to break in,” Holland says. “I remember walking away thinking, ‘Boy, that guy’s really good.’ To see him hit the big time is really exciting.”

Holland has his own small nightclub now. They call it Titan Gym. It’s not “The Tonight Show,” but tonight, it’s his show, and even Jay Leno had to start somewhere.