After a Game, the Work Begins for Guard Willis : Prep basketball: Mira Costa standout, bound for Hawaii, has little time for socializing with teammates. He reviews his play with his father, who gives a thumbs up or thumbs down.

It was 10:15 p.m. Tuesday, but there would be a long night ahead for Shane Willis.

Mira Costa High had just lost a home basketball game to Peninsula, 53-43, and most of Willis’ teammates were deciding where to go to eat.

Willis, a senior who is averaging 28 points, seven assists and six rebounds as the Mustangs’ point guard, wouldn’t be joining them.

After every game that Willis plays, he and his father, Wayne, watch a videotape of Willis’ performance at home. They analyze every shot, every pass, every move. Then they focus on his defense.

Often, they watch videos until 2 a.m., a routine since Willis was in sixth grade.

“I like seeing what I did well and what I need to improve on,” said the 6-foot, 180-pound Willis, in his fourth year as a varsity starter. He had a bad game against Peninsula, scoring only 13 points as Mira Costa dropped to 7-4.

Wayne Willis, whom his son refers to as a personal coach, is an insurance salesman. He said he has been involved in basketball for more than 30 years, including a stint as a part-time assistant to Coach Jim Nielsen at Redondo High.

Willis said he has not grown tired of his father’s involvement, saying it has helped his game. It appears it has. After being recruited by schools such as San Francisco, Weber State, San Diego State and Pepperdine, Willis signed last month to play for Hawaii next season.

Willis, a Torrance-born Samoan, said one of the reasons he chose Hawaii was a chance to play with senior Jarren Akana, a Samoan who was a teammate of Willis on the Western Samoan National Team during the Oceania Games in Western Samoa in May.

Willis also has family living in Honolulu.

“I’ve got a few relatives in Hawaii and I haven’t really been able to play in front of them,” he said.

As for the Oceania Games, Willis was permitted by Mira Costa administrators to take a month off from school, but he had to take class work with him on the trip. Willis said he didn’t try out for the team, but Samoan team representatives, who had heard of his ability, asked him to join.

When Willis joined the team, he was only a practice player as the squad had already reached the 10-player limit set by FIFA, the international governing body of basketball. But going to his parents’ homeland was an awakening experience.

“I got to go back to my old roots,” he said. “I’d never been to Samoa before. I got to see how our people live. I got to meet relatives I’d never met before.”

After winning the tournament against teams from Tahiti, Fiji and Tonga, the Western Samoa group traveled to New Zealand to play in a tournament against the national teams of New Zealand and Australia.

Willis scored 14 points in a 20-point loss to the Australian team, which featured former Seton Hall standout Andrew Gaze.

“We got down early to them and I put (Willis) in and he sparked us big time,” said Tim Murphy, who coached Western Samoa and is an assistant at UC Irvine. “He played hard-nosed. Nobody could control him on the Australian team.”

Said Willis: “I got to guard Gaze a little bit. He’s pretty good. He has a nice jumper.”

Willis’ jump shot is not as consistent. So the left-hander usually relies on quick, slashing drives to the basket.

“He’s a great point guard in the open court,” said Mira Costa Coach Glenn Marx, in his sixth year at the school. “The thing that makes him so tough is he’s so physically strong.”

Peninsula Coach Cliff Warren said it was Willis’ defense that concerned him.

“He disrupts everything we try and do offensively,” Warren said. “He disrupts my post and disrupts my guards. He has tremendously quick hands.”

Said Mira Costa junior Max Gulezian, a starting guard: “He does amazing things out there a lot of times. The more you play with him, the more you realize how good he is and how good he’s going to be.”

That is what Hawaii Coach Riley Wallace is counting on, although he knows the conditions. Wallace agreed to allow Willis to take a two-year hiatus from the team after his sophomore year. Willis, a Mormon, plans to go on a two-year mission and return for the 1998-99 season.

“I feel God has given me my talent and I might as well sacrifice these two years just for him,” Willis said.

Wallace, meanwhile, said having a player sit out two seasons might benefit the Rainbows.

“These kids come back more mature and have two more great years,” Wallace said. “He already knows your system, so it could be to your advantage.”

Agreeing to this situation was one thing. Finding Willis to tell him was something else.

Willis’ family, which includes his mother Malama, his sister Losa, 26, his brother Wayne Jr., 24, and his father, does not have a telephone. For college coaches, who do much of their recruiting by phone, it makes matters difficult.

But that was the intent.

“When the recruiting started, we took the phone off,” Wayne said. “We directed everything to coach Marx so that way (Shane) doesn’t have to be bothered with all the communications. If the schools really wanted him, they would come. There was no pressure on him.”

For Shane, who starts every day at 5:30 a.m. with religion class and ends it going over videotape with his father in the wee hours of the morning, it was a comfort to have a few peaceful moments to himself.

“Afterward the recruiters said, ‘It was better for you not to have a phone because we’d be calling you every single minute,’ ” Willis said.

Marx, a former assistant at USC, Brown and Hawaii, knows how aggressively colleges can recruit a high school player. For Willis’ sake, he didn’t mind being the intermediary.

“I think it was a good thing because it took a lot of that focus away from him,” Marx said. “He’d call them from school or they’d call him at certain selected times. It allowed him to focus on his grades.”

Willis, who carries close to a B average, passed the Scholastic Aptitude Test on the first attempt. He was president of his freshman and sophomore classes, treasurer of his junior class and is president of the Mira Costa student body. This impressed Wallace.

“He’s got leadership ability on and off the court and he’s very popular with his (classmates),” Wallace said. “That means he’s really got it together.”

Especially when he is playing basketball. But Willis can’t help but know that. He sees it every night on video.